My brother went lacking within the 2004 tsunami after being swept away by a shifting landfill… we spent 5 days trying to find him – it was hell

When Luke Simon and his brother Piers spent Christmas on the beautiful island of  Ko Phi Phi in Thailand, they expected sunshine and bliss.

However, the inseparable siblings had their peaceful surroundings shattered by a devastating act of nature that would tear them apart and forever change their lives.

Just 24 hours after celebrating the festive season on the beach, and telling each other ‘I love you’, the pair from Somerset found themselves running for their lives alongside terrified locals in a desperate bid to reach safety.

The paradise they were in had turned to hell on earth, with a mountain of water and debris ploughing towards them, obliterating everything in its path.

As 30-year-old Luke climbed to safety with his then-girlfriend, Sophie, his older brother was swept away after getting caught in the ‘moving landfill’ just as he was inches from making his escape.

Luke would never see Piers again, with his sibling’s body being identified five days later, adding his name to the list of 149 Britons who were tragically killed in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.

Twenty years on from the disaster, which took the lives of an estimated 225,000 people, the now-50-year-old tells MailOnline the memories of that day still weigh on his mind, as does the heartbreak of knowing his two daughters have had to grow up without an uncle.

The close brothers worked as garden designers in the years before the tragedy, with Luke deciding to take a year out to travel when he was 28.

He ended up in Thailand where he met a group of teachers and in 2004 became an intern at a school in Chiang Mai, in the northern part of the country.

In December 2004, he was joined by a group of friends, Ben, Sophie and Nick as well as brother Piers, to spend their Christmas holiday and together they travelled south to the Ko Phi Phi, known for its pristine beaches and turquoise waters.

‘In the mornings we’d walk around the town and then in the afternoons, we spent all our time on the beach playing beach volleyball.’ Luke recounted.

On Christmas day the two went for a walk by the seaside where according to Luke, the two shared a really meaningful conversation.

He said: ‘During Christmas lunchtime, I went for a walk on the beach with Peers by myself. 

‘We had a really good heart-to-heart. I don’t know why we told each other we loved one another. Although we often didn’t say that because we didn’t feel we needed to, for some reason, it just felt right to say it. 

‘We enjoyed a nice walk along the beach, had a really good time, and then returned to volleyball.

‘That turned out to be the last time we had a deep conversation.’

But on Boxing Day, they were due to catch the ferry to a different part of the island when everything changed.

He said: ‘On Boxing Day, we went to a cafe next to where we would get the ferry it was a French breakfast and we were about to get up and leave.

‘People started rushing in, knocking over tables and chairs, trying to get through the cafe and out a narrow corridor at the back. We had no idea what was going on.’

He added: ‘At first, I thought maybe someone outside had a knife or was threatening, or that a rabid dog was attacking people. 

‘But as we made our way down the corridor, the crowd bottlenecked, and I began to wonder if someone had a gun and was threatening to use it. 

‘Just as we were about to enter the narrow corridor, I remember clenching my back, bracing for the possibility of being shot.

‘One of the guys with us, Nick, who had been in Thailand a bit longer than us and spoke some Thai, asked a local what was going on. The man replied, “Water come, water come.” That’s when everything changed.’

The group rushed for shelter among the locals and tourists running for their lives.

Luke explained: ‘By the time we got through the cafe and out into the market, the wave had already refracted around the headland.

‘It had come in from the north side [of the island], which was a very shallow beach, forming a wave about seven metres high that crashed into the beach and then surged onto the shore.

‘Suddenly, that volume of water, which was like moving landfill – because it obliterated anything that wasn’t a decent structure – snapping 30ft palm trees and was coming towards us like a supercharged canal.

‘The last thing I remember telling the group was that we needed to get up high and off the ground.’

He added:  ‘[The water] felt like it was going about 30 miles an hour and very quickly making its own paths through the town, but effectively turning the streets into canals that were about two metres deep but full of debris moving at about 30 miles an hour.’

During these chaotic scenes, Luke’s girlfriend at the time, Sophie, was trying to climb to the top of the roof of the building with Piers hoisting her up.

Luke watched as the water got up her body and head as the sludge of water full of debris washed past.

She managed to climb the water but Piers was tragically caught up in the wave.

It was only when the wave subsided around an hour later that Luke realised his brother was still missing and nowhere to be found.

‘The area went eerily silent,’ he said ‘The shouting and screaming stopped, and no further waves came.

‘It was then that I realised – where’s Piers? I started shouting his nickname “Lloyd” but I think at that point, everyone was just in shock.’

Despite being determined to find his brother, the seriousness of the situation prompted Luke to start thinking the worst.

‘I wanted to think about what we were going to do but my brain wasn’t really cooperating – it kept trying to piece together sentences like I was preparing to say them at his funeral.

‘I knew the severity of the situation, and I knew that Piers wasn’t with us. We hoped he was somewhere else, but the reality of what we had just experienced told me that he might not be.’

Not knowing if other waves would be hitting the island, the four managed to climb out of the roof and joined hundreds of locals up a hill where they stayed until nightfall.

During this Luke gave first aid to hundreds of people who had been caught up in the tragedy.

As so many injured people turned to the hills to turn from the damage caused, Luke assumed his brother would end up finding them so he went around different groups of people to see if he could spot his brother, but to no avail.

Luke explained: ‘It was like a washing machine, you’re in amongst it being turned upside down, but you’re in amongst it with all this debris, which was really sharp. You’re trying to effectively swim to the surface in this maelstrom of rubble and moving water.

‘So people had really badly cut hands and arms where they were trying to get to the surface.’

The next day, the group came down from the hills and went back to the town, only to be confronted with hellish scenes of devastation. 

They went back to the cafe where they were, as Luke hoped he could find his brother there, again Piers was nowhere to be seen.

Luke said: ‘Nothing was left untouched – everything had been stripped away, even the paint off the walls. I went back to the last place we were, and all the debris had just piled up, bottlenecked into an alleyway, about 10 feet high.’

It became clear to them they had to leave the island, so they boarded a ferry, around an hour and 20 minutes, to the nearby island of Phuket, which had also sustained heavy damage, but where authorities were gathering up resources to help the injured.

The group were met by hundreds of people looking to see if their relatives and friends had made it, and during this, they were offered food by ‘very kind’ locals, despite the fact many had lost their homes, livelihoods and loved ones.

They then spent four fraught days looking for Piers, only for their worst nightmares to come true.

Luke heard bodies from Ko Phi Phi were being taken to a temple in Krabbi, some 100 miles away, and so on December 30 the group hired a car and drove there.

It was here where they were shown a slideshow of bodies, one of which Luke horrifyingly realised was his brother Piers – he was number 348.

Although he wanted to go identify his brother, Luke was barred from doing so by Israeli forensic teams and was told: ‘We’re not going to let you because we don’t want the last image of your brother to be of him as a dead person.’

Piers’ body was identified by his dental records.

Luke accompanied his brother’s body on a flight back to Britain on December 31, and in the years since the heartbreak has been left with a sense of loss that his older brother had missed out on their future together. 

He said: ‘One of the things I struggle is that my daughters don’t have an uncle or an auntie.

‘That’s one of the things I found the hardest because they’re missing out on.

‘As an uncle he would be very caring just because that is who he was from the age of 18 to 33.

‘He would be loving and giving. They would have liked him. He was a nice guy who a lot of people loved.’

Once back home though, Luke wanted to make sure he helped the people of Ko Phi Phi rebuild their island in the best way he could.

His family setup the Piers Simon Appeal (PSA) to raise money to the community and between February and October 2005, he was wiring £10,000 to help clean up the island. In May that year, PSA was granted its charity status.

For the next four years, the organisation continued to provide funds to disaster victims and is still running, spearheaded by Luke and Piers’ parents, Henry and Celia Simon as acting trustees.

In 2009, the charity shifted to helping children in education in developing countries and ten years later the charity School in a Bag was set up. 

The charity works by sending rucksacks with six exercise books, a ruler, stationary items, eating utensils and hygiene items to South America, Africa, and Ukraine.

Each bag shipped is numbered so donors get the unique school bag number and once it’s delivered they get told where it went and the story of the child they helped support. So far they have sent 151,540 bags across the world.

Luke, who with his brother had previously done a charity bike ride in India, said: ‘Although I was teaching and there’s a good chance that I would still be teaching now 20 years later, I do think the seed of the charity sector was born in me.

‘We used the loss of Piers and the beautiful treatment that we received from the Thai people at the time of complete and utter adversity to effectively, you know, as a springboard platform for helping others.’

Twenty years on from the disaster, as part of a documentary to mark the tragedy, Luke returned to the Thai island.

Speaking about this he said: ‘It was brilliant, if you went to Phi Phi you wouldn’t know what had happened. There’s something lovely about being back to the place where I was with Piers and where I have so many good memories.

‘To some extent, this has allowed me to move on and feel positive about it. Especially as I played a role in helping to rebuild the island.’