Tsunami Survivor: 'I Felt Guilty I'd Lived'

Written By Unknown on Minggu, 21 Desember 2014 | 16.15

When Amanda Rabbow describes the hours she fought for her life in the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004, it is as if she is back in the wave again.

"I just got carried off in the water until I backed into a brick wall - and everything carried in the water piled up against me so I got crushed backwards against this wall - and it started stacking up and rising up above my head and started to push me under," she said.

"Then I remember taking my last breath before I went under - and I just remember thinking - I hope it's quick - because I couldn't breathe.'

Amanda was on holiday in the beach resort of Khao Lak in Southern Thailand with her boyfriend - they were in bed when the wave struck their beachside bungalow.

Miraculously, just as she thought she was going to die, she was pulled out of the water by a local Thai man, who she is convinced saved her life.

She was then washed into the water again and spent three hours battling struggling to survive.

"It took me in it like a washing machine, that's all I can describe it as, and I remember doing massive somersaults and then coming back up to the surface and taking a massive breath and then being taken under again - more somersaults, come up for air, more somersaults," she said.

Amanda was finally able to pull herself up into a tree. When the water receded she climbed down, surrounded by bodies - including the body of the man who saved her.

"I know that he didn't survive and I have a lot of questions in my head in life - if you do the right thing by someone - he should have survived because he saved my life without a doubt."

Amanda managed to find her boyfriend up on the hillside and they stayed in a temple with other survivors until rescue teams finally managed to clear the roads to Khao Lak.

She faced an horrific journey to Bangkok.

"People paid for us to get on this bus but I couldn't sit upright on a chair and so I had to be laid flat in the luggage hold of this bus - and I was sick for 14-and-a-half hours solidly, brown water and I don't know what was coming out of my body - I thought I was going to die."

At last she was back in London, but she faced months of healing both her physical and psychological scars.

"I felt like I should have died, so I felt guilty, felt guilty for surviving and someone else not having the chance to survive," she said.

"I couldn't ever sleep - I didn't want to do anything and ... I was scared to do anything."

As the weeks passed, Amanda became determined to return to Thailand:

'I wanted to go back to Khao Lak and thank the people and to see if I could find the family of the man who I still think saved my life.'

She and a group of friends raised more than £50,000, and went back to Khao Lak to help the rebuilding effort:

"There was just a massive community of people that were there - there were survivors that were in back braces still, so injured, but they had stayed on to help.

"We could see where to use our money - there were Thai man mixing cement by hand, so we said - 'Here's some money, let's buy a cement mixer'."

Amanda remembers Boxing Day 2004 as the day her life changed forever.

'I know I had a life before 2004 - I was born in 1976, I know that - but I survived that day for one reason or another and I was meant to survive to have my children.

'So I think of life as of that day - that day my new life began - and I see life from 2004 - not before.'

You can see more about the Boxing Day Tsunami in a Sky News' documentary Tsunami: 10 Years After the Wave, on Sky News this evening at 9pm, and also on Catch up.

:: If you have been affected by any of the issues in Tsunami: 10 Years After The Wave, the following helplines can offer help and support:

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  1. Gallery: Archive CCTV Stills Of Tsunami

    Aceh province in Indonesia was the hardest hit by the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004. CCTV stills from the capital Banda Aceh show how the tsunami destroyed everything in its path. Here, people walk away from the approaching water - unaware of what is to come

People still on the street see the debris that is being swept along in the water and begin to run

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