it was going to be. hey, hey, hey, hey! there were bodies and their hands were reaching out. i dream about that sometimes. lou and i had just got engaged. it was a bit of a whirlwind romance. we met each other at school, but we'd not seen each other for about 15 years. i proposed to her in a really seedy pub in york and she said yes, and we decided to get married in december. and we were going to have five weeks away in thailand. my name is mawardah. i'm 31 years old.

i'm from banda aceh, indonesia. in 2004, i was 11 years old. i live only with my mum because when i was a baby, my mum and my dad already divorced. i was in thailand aged 13, where i was planning to spend christmas and my 14th birthday with my family. it was a paradise dream destination. i'd been to sri lankal earlier in 2004 to get married in february, i and my husband and i loved it so much that i we decided to go back. my husband and my| daughter, just going for a christmas holiday. a powerful earthquake has hit the island of sumatra in indonesia. details are still coming in,

but there are reports of widespread damage. news agencies and local radio stations are reporting that a number of people have been killed. i'm rachel harvey, and in 2004, i was the bbc's indonesia correspondent based in jakarta. i was woken up on the morning of boxing day by the news desk in london saying that there had been this big earthquake recorded off the coast of indonesia, and could i try and get as much information as possible and file a radio dispatch as soon as possible? banda aceh was a really tough place forjournalists to get to, because it was the site of a really nasty separatist insurgency, but also stunningly beautiful. it had that real contrast about it. in the morning, at about 8:00, my mum woke me

up because she told me there was an earthquake. it was shaking so hard. it's like, "doo, doo, doo, doo." like that. suddenly, there was a sound like aeroplane, like, o—o—o—h. and my neighbours said, "oh, that's the aeroplane." but my small village is far away from the airport. it's impossible, the sound of the aeroplane, so i told them that's the sound of wave. there was a horrible, lingering silence from aceh, which was always going to be bad news — we just didn't quite know how bad. it was just a regular morning, a regular thai morning.

we were a bit hungover from partying the night before. lou and i went to the reception area to book a flight out for the following day. we noticed that the sea had pushed back, and we could see that really clearly, because where we were staying was right on the water in khao lak. my mum said, "there looks like there's going to be a bit of... there's going to be a bit of a flood, so you should put the cushions inside." i did that, i put all the cushions in my room, and then my... i think my mum had said, "just stay in your rooms and close your doors and everything will be fine." i had no sensation| of the earthquake. we went to a small cabana, erm, therapy room by the beach, - and that's when i was welcomed by the massage therapist. - probably ten minutes -

into the massage, i was told to run and she said, . "run to your husband. run to your husband." geologically, what happened was the two plates flipped one under the other and then back up again. and that's what forced the volume of water that created the tsunami. so it sucked the sea out and then pushed it back up again. 50 about 20 minutes after the earthquake, the first waves hit the shores of aceh. then going west, those waves hit india, sri lanka, thailand and eventually ended up on the shores of east africa — somalia, tanzania, kenya. mawardah: we tried to run away from that situation - with my sister and my mum. and my mum said, "oh, i need to go back to close the door or the window."

so we ran about 2km away from my small village and we couldn't escape. we were sat at reception and people started running past. nobody runs in koh phi phi. there's no reason to run. people shouting: whoa! man: get in, get in, get in! as soon as it hit your feet, it took you off your feet. we were holding hands and it just took us apart from each other straight away. i started shouting, "guys, i think this is really serious. i think this is really serious." and then at that point, water was coming into... started to come into the room. at a certain point, it sort of became obvious that the water wasn't going to stop. it was like being in a washing machine.

you didn't know which way was up. i was upside down, holding my breath, holding my breath, holding my breath, thinking, "oh, my god, what's going on?" it was like a dream. i spent about five or seven minutes in the water, and then i opened my eyes and i look around. there were a lot of bodies around me. i don't know at what point i came back up to the surface. it was like i could feel the air on some part of my body. so i thought, "hang on a second, there's a bit of a chance here." i was at the top of a palm tree, so... ..i could see the tops of the palm trees like that, and then i could just see, from left and right, this huge, brown rolling wave like this. like, huge, huge, huge, huge. i climbed the coconut tree and i hold it forfive minutes, if i'm not mistaken.

and, you know, at that time, my sister was calling my name, my nickname, "maneh, maneh, maneh!" and then my sister... my sister was drifting. i could feel the water started slowing down. so i went back...into the buildings looking for lou, and there was a lot of really injured people. there was one lady who was... her leg had split — been cut from her knee to her ankle — and her leg was completely open, and so i had to tear a sheet and wrap her leg up. but i couldn't really do much more for her than that, so i got the mattress straight, so it was a bit flatter, and laid her down and wrapped her leg up. and there was another young girl who was trapped by her head, which really lingered... it still lingers with me, cos i couldn't really help her. there was other people with her, and it was... that was really traumatising. i was just so worried about lou

that i sort of wanted to keep looking for lou. i tried to went down from the coconut tree, and i saw the solid land with a lot of rubble. a man, erm, asked me to go with him to the safe place. when we arrived there, ifelt like i couldn't do this because i didn't find my mum yet, right? so i spent about three hours at that place with all my neighbours — all of them with their family, but i was still alone at that time. yeah. and then suddenly my neighbour told me, "mawardah, your mum already...passed away." ah. oh, my god. when i found daisy-

and i hugged her, iwas still really confused. there was a lot of water - and a lot of debris everywhere. and i said, "what's happened?" and they said, "there's been i an earthquake and a tsunami." and i was relieved, - because daisy was alive. we went south and we got as far as a place called kosgoda. - and the devastation was horrific. - i can remember there - were bodies and their hands were reaching out. probably how they'd been| reaching when they finally lost their lives. and... ..i rememberwishing i'd held their hands. i and it seems odd to remember that when they had already- passed away, but...

..i did wish i'd i held their hands. and i still... i dream about that sometimes. i was quite confident, it was kind of weird. i was quite confident that i would find her and she'd be all right. you don't like to let yourself think that there's going to be any other outcome than that. so i thought, "right, i'm going to go up and get on this roof and see what i can see and go up there." and so i was chatting to a few people on this roof, and then all of a sudden, i heard my name being called. lou: it was pretty emotional. however, i hadn't allowed myself to think that anything had happened to greg, so i kind of treated it like he'd just been out to the shop, whereas you'd had a different experience. so it was... you were... you were noticeably more emotional than me for once. yeah. i'd seen what the wave had done to a lot of people, so i was probably a bit more pleased to see lou than she was me.

when i got hit by the wave, i was instantly kind of tumbled and thrown around, and ifelt like i got trapped. i have no idea, actually, how long we were in the water for. you kind of get to the point where you felt like you couldn't hold your breath any longer. and then i did contemplate taking a mouthful of water because i wasn't going to get out of it alive. i never thought that i would survive it. so once the water had come down, i decided to get myself high and safe. so i went back into the hotel that had the three floors and climbed up onto the third floor. and there, there was a couple who had been in their room for the duration. they saw me, and with me being quite badly injured, they took me in and looked after me and kind of gave me a bed. i'd been hit quite badly in the side of my face. erm, i've got, like,

a big dint in my cheekbone now, and i broke some ribs as well. i remember walking up the staircase in the hotel when i was trying to get to safety and going past a mirror, and i walked past and saw myself and didn't recognise my own self in the mirror. so, that evening was really tough because i didn't know who else was alive. i felt like they were gone and that was... that was sure. and i was thinking through, "0k, my grandparents, they're really old. there's no way they'd get through something like that. they're gone. my brother and my dad — well, they were playing golf, and that was on the beach. well, they're gone." and the other friends that we were with, ijust thought, "yeah, everyone's gone. " so, in the morning on the 27th of december, i went down from the hill, and then i went to a refugee camp, and i met my aunt at that place.

and the next day, i met andrew. as far as i can tell, no—one�*s come out this far yet — no—one to count the bodies or start to bury them — and there are corpses all around me here. i don't have a father since i was born, so when i met him, ifelt like a father from him, yeah. this was how i found mawardah — lost and alone a few days after the tsunami, convinced her entire family had been wiped out. ifelt lonely, even i stayed with my aunt. but i lost my mum, right? i stayed with her for... ..for two weeks before i met my sister. mawardah has just been reunited with her 16—year—old sister, mutiyah. "we cried with happiness,"

she says, "when we realised we'd both survived." of course, i was so happy when i met my sister for the first time, because i thought my sister already passed away, right? we then heard that there were trucks coming to take people to the airport. and then we arrived in bangkok on the evening of the 27th, and everybody was shoved into one big room. there was a knock at the door and someone came in, and he'd come to let me know that my brother was alive, my dad was alive, my sister was alive, my grandmother and my grandfather was alive. but they couldn't find my mum, and, obviously, people watching this will think, you know, "you all must have been devastated at that point," but — and i've said it before to so many of my friends — i felt like i'd won the lottery, because i felt like everyone was gone.

and... and in fact, everybody, just bar my mum, was alive and they were in bangkok. rachel harvey: when you come to a place like this, you realise just how much relief is needed. if you look around in every direction, a complete circle, it's absolutely wrecked. there is no relief operation here. once we got into the main city, you had a real sense of the catastrophe that had occurred. i remember we went past a station where the acehnese red crescent were collecting bodies. amazing, amazing human beings. and i remember looking at these bodies and starting to count, because i thought that was my job as a reporter, that i needed to bear witness. i needed tojust, you know, keep accountable. and i remember stopping after 300 and thinking, "this is absolutely futile. there's. .. this... this is just silly. i need to be describing

what i'm seeing, not counting." my dad and some of his friends were visiting the different hospitals to see whether my mother had shown up, or some of the other friends had shown up. and they couldn't... they couldn't find her. so we waited a couple of days after the 31st, and then i think that we came home either on the first or the 2nd of january. you've landed back in a house where everything is the same apart from the person that's running the house. that's... the heart of the house has gone, and you don't know where they are because we couldn't find her. we couldn't find her. i didn't want - to leave sri lanka. i didn't want _ to leave sri lanka. to leave the people behind. i remember my family. members coming and... ..spending quite a lot. of time consoling people who were really upset | at the thought of what could have happened. i was quite relieved when that

died down and i could really. crack on with what i needed to do, because at that - point, that was all i. was concerned about. i catalogued thousands - of photographs, got involved in fast—tracking the charity. with the charity commission, because we wanted to make sure that people had a safe _ and effective way| to donate money. we didn't find out until we went back to thailand that my mother's body had been found. we did go back then, in the february half term. you know, we were lucky that we were able to. and so my brother, my sister, my dad, me and another family, we travelled back to thailand. and so then we... we came back home and, like, the... that first year was just kind of like a blur of everyone trying to get through it. but we did do things like write letters to my mother and burn

them in the garden and do little tributes to her, but we didn't really speak about it that much as a family. we stayed about one or two months in the refugee camp. andrew harding: the two girls now spend their days together, queuing for the latest hand—outs. and then we moved to barrack. so, barrack also built by the volunteer. today, while mawardah is doing her exams, mutiyah is back at the barracks that have just been built for the survivors. we spent about four orfive months in barrack while...waiting for our houses built again. i got my first house again after it was destroyed by the tsunami.

you can move in two weeks�* time. two weeks? two weeks. but, you know, the condition of my house was not really good, yeah, ithink. she exclaims joyously hello! after that, we met again in 2014. it's so good to see you. look at you! you're huge. i'm so big. we never keep in touch. but he tried to find me in aceh again, but it was a little bit hard to find me because my neighbours called my nam ' e 'maneh" but andrew tried to find my name "mawardah", so it's unfamiliar for the people around me. i couldn't imagine that i would meet andrew again, yeah.

rachel: i am now an emergency humanitarian responder focusing j on planning and preparedness for the charity shelterbox. i do genuinely enjoy it. if... that sounds like a very strange thing to say, but trying to alleviate suffering or to explain what's happening. i always used to say, as a journalist — and i think it probably remains true — that i almost see my mission as trying to make people on one side of the world... ..give a damn about people on the other. we were laid on the beach the day before the wave, and we'd just got... we'd had a whirlwind romance and we'd just got married and... and we were in the prime of our years, and we... i remember leaning over to her and saying, "let's travel the world. you know, we can go and do some cool stuff now."

two days later, we were laid in hospital and i said to lou, "holidays are rubbish. let's have a family. as soon as we can get home, let's have a family and stay at home." so that's what we did, really, once lou... once we were back to our fit selves. so, we actually went back this easter — just gone with our children — and that was amazing. we just had the best time. 20 years on, i would say i feel really lucky that i've had the opportunity to have some therapy and have the opportunity to meet this incredible guy that i did a podcast with, this project where we go through other people's experiences, we ask them questions about who they lost, how they're dealing with it, how to talk about it, what to do. so that project, i think, helped me heal a whole lot. i travel to sri lankai now around three to four times every year. it's had a profound

impact on my life, | as i knew it before... ..in a great way and in. a not—so—great way also. it also affected my family and... - ..my marriage... ..because. .. ..there was a feeling that i... ..spent too much of my time in sri lanka. - but if i had to again reduce - who i was then to who i am now is perhaps someone... ..with not enough- purpose to someone with extraordinary purpose. hi, guys! now i have ambition to be a youtuber. this is so beautiful. i love travelling, so that's

why i make youtube channel — to share to people that if you guys don't have a lot of money, you still can travel. so not only for rich people who can travel. yeah, that's my purpose. it's hard here to run our life without mum. but i'm strong and i have patience, so i can be useful for people. so i feel happy and i feel proud of me. and, yeah, if i can help many people, so that's enough for me. it's weird that it's 20 years onwards, because it doesn't feel like that much time has passed, but i remember when it was... it did feel weird when i realised that it was... ..that i'd spent more time without my mother than i had spent time with her. i think it's helpful

for someone to say this has happened, talk about how it affected them, and then show that there is lots of really great life after it. and i don't forget that i was really lucky on that day. i don't forget that i almost died, and i don't forget that i have the privilege of — what is it now? — 20 more years of life when other people haven't had that. so...yeah. it's bonded us. you know, it's a good way to start a marriage. yeah. cos we were very... you know, we'd only been together a year, when, really... 0r two years when it hit and we went through all of that. so it did bond us as a couple. i feel like if we got through that together, we can kind of get through anything. i'm glad i was there because our friends and we survived, because it just made you realise how fragile life is and how quickly it can all be taken. and...so then it...focuses your attention and focuses you

on what's good in life and... ..and the things... keep the things that you love...tight. hello again. it's been an exceptionally mild christmas period thus far. yesterday, christmas day, it reached 14.2 celsius in aberdeen. the average december temperature here would be around about seven celsius. but how long is this going to last? well, you can see the days of the week here. the yellows and ambers representing the milder conditions. and it stays with us right the way through to the weekend, except for across northern scotland, where we see something that bit colder coming our way with some wintry showers here by the end of the weekend. beyond that, low

pressure pulls away. you can see an array of isobars, it will be windy at times. and then as we head up towards the new year, look at the array of isobars and wet weather, potentially some snow as well, so it's something worth keeping an eye on if you are travelling around new year. today, though, remaining mild and still cloudy, cloudy and murky. there's some drizzle, there's some hill fog, there's some dank conditions. we've also got rain moving across central scotland and northern ireland. best chance of any brightness today will be across parts of eastern england and also northeast wales. temperatures eight to about 12 degrees. now, heading on through the evening and overnight, our band of rain across central scotland and northern ireland pushes steadily northwards, leaving us again with a lot of cloud, dank conditions, where we see holes break in that cloud, so under clear skies we could also see some fog patches form. but for the time of year it's not going to be cold. 0ur overnight lows — five to nine degrees. into tomorrow, then, our weather front pushes northwards.

but it is a waving front so it is going to come back southwards again. so friday — a lot of cloud around. a weather front in the northwest producing some patchy rain. best breaks tomorrow for brightness, north—east scotland, parts of eastern england and also once again northeast wales. temperatures eight to 12 degrees. now beyond that, as we head on into the weekend, our weather front does continue to sink southwards across scotland and northern ireland. we've got another part of it coming in from the west. a lot of cloud around. but through central parts of england and wales we should see some more in the way of brightness with highs up to about 11. it continues mild as we head towards the new year, but don't forget to keep in touch with the forecast because it's looking unsettled then.

live from london. this is bbc news.

ceremonies are taking place to mark the twentieth anniversary of the indian ocean earthquake and tsunami. five journalists have been killed after an israeli strike outside a hospital in central gaza, according to local health authorities. authorities in south—eastern australia tell people in dozens of rural communities to leave their homes "immediately" to escape a bushfire. boxing day sales begin today but the doors to some of the uk's largest retailers will remain closed. however — online sales are expected to rise. commemorations have been taking place in countries across the indian ocean to mark the 20th anniversary of the catastrophic tsunami that killed more than 220,000 people.