Auckland man thought he would drown when tsunami hit

A Thai man surrounded by the damage caused by a tsunami squats on the sand at Patong beach in Phuket. Picture / Reuters

Aucklander Shaun Hickey was sure he would drown when the tsunami hit his hotel in Phuket's Patong district.

He and partner Emma Dini were having breakfast at the Merlin Beach Resort when the tidal wave arrived about 10am on Boxing Day.

The 38-year-old and Ms Dini, a 33-year-old Australian who lives with him in Auckland, ran for their lives when they saw a massive wave heading for them.

"We ran out through the kitchen to the back, away from the water, but we should have gone up," he told Melbourne's The Age newspaper.

"There was a truck out the back that we tried to get on but the water picked it up.

"I thought, 'This is it, I am going to drown'. I was under water and it kept pounding me against these walls. I'd think that's it, but they kept giving way. It felt like I went through four of them."

He thought that the hotel's exposed position, with beach on each other side, may have saved him.

"I think two waves coming in opposite directions threw me back to the surface; there was a woman on a table who pulled me up to her," he said at a Phuket hospital yesterday.

Ms Dini, who initially thought a terrorist bomb had gone off, said she feared the worst for her partner.

"I thought Shaun was gone," she said. "I was screaming."

She grabbed a pole and climbed the resort's tennis court fence and held on.

She then saw Mr Hickey in the water and pulled him up onto the court's fragile roof.

It gave way, and she partly fell through, suffering cuts down a leg.

The two then pulled anyone they could reach from the surging water. "It must have been adrenalin; it is amazing what people were doing," Mr Hickey said.

Two more five to six-metre waves came through before the water eased and the couple ran for an escarpment behind the hotel, clambering as high as they could and waiting there for hours, as there fears of another tidal wave.

A devastating scene greeted them on their return.

"There were refrigerators in the swimming pool, cars upside down, on their noses. And then, in the lobby on the second floor, the Christmas tree was still standing," Ms Dini said.

- NZPA