British brothers have opened up about ‘fighting for their lives’ during a tsunami that killed their parents.
It’s been 20 years since the disaster that killed more than 220,000 people after a huge earthquake with a magnitude of 9.2 – 9.3 struck the coast of Indonesia.
The devastating December 26 2004 tsunami struck a dozen countries around the Indian Ocean rim, eradicated entire coastal communities, decimated families and crashed over tourist-filled beaches, with survivors wading through a horror show of corpse-filled waters.
Leonard Barratt, 50, and Catherine Mullan, 53, from Cornwall, were among those who sadly lost their lives in Thailand when waves of up to 30 metres struck.
Their children Louis and Theo were 16 and 11 at the time and were separated but managed to survive.
In a new National Geographic documentary Tsunami: Race Against Time, the brothers speak of the traumatic experience.
Louis recalls ‘holding on to each other’ and described the tsunami as ‘scary’.
He said: ‘We were going out on a snorkelling trip …and then dad came to our room to grab us and say, there’s something happening on the waterfront, to come have a look.
Louis and Theo were 16 and 11 when the tsunami hit but managed to survive
In a new National Geographic documentary Tsunami: Race Against Time, the brothers speak of the traumatic experience
Holiday houses destroyed by the tsunami are pictured on Phi Phi island, Thailand, 2004
The beach of Unawatuna, Sri Lanka after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami
Debris is scattered where bungalows used to stand on Phi Phi Island’s in Ton Sai Bay, 2004
‘When we got there, we could see that the water receded quite far, and you could just see kind of a bubbling sea in the distance but no one knew what was going on at that stage.’
He and Theo ran to lock their room and about 20 seconds later returned to find that ‘panic had set in’, before the water quickly caught up with them.
‘Theo and I were holding on to each other, and then the water just became too deep, and we were at our depth and then we got separated, and then we both went our separate ways through the water.’
Thankfully, they later managed to find each other and set out to look for their parents.
The boys were in Thailand for several days before they flew back to the UK without their parents.
They were later adopted by a family in Cornwall.
Tsunami: Race Against Time premieres November 25 at 9pm on National Geographic and will be available for streaming on Disney+ the same day.