Surviving THE TERROR

For Tracey Lee, this time of year always takes her back to the awful moment the tsunami struck

- KATE CHAPMAN

It's 20 years since large areas of Asia were devastated by a massive tsunami on 26 December 2004 a date Tracey Lee will never forget after narrowly escaping with her life. Now 55, she was on a trip to Sri Lanka with partner Luke, now 49, his parents and his four siblings for two weeks over Christmas. They'd gone to see the area his father Pat grew up in, when disaster struck the coastal town of Unawatuna, where they were staying in a raised concrete bungalow on the edge of the jungle.

'So many people around us died - we were so lucky to survive. I do believe your whole life is mapped out for you - it was fate, that's what saved our lives,' says Tracey, a creative operative at ZSL, London Zoo.

'We'd intended to stay in beach bungalows, but as it was Christmas they were being used by Sri Lankans - our accommodation was a threeminute walk away. If we'd stayed on that beach, we would have been dead.'

Tracey and Luke, who live in London, celebrated a family Christmas on the beach and were woken by the giant wave at 9.20am the next morning. It had been triggered by a 9.1-magnitude earthquake in Sumatra, off the northern coast of Indonesia. The resulting tsunami is believed to be the deadliest in history, killing more than 230,000 people across including 14 countries 30,000 in Sri Lanka.

'I thought it was a plane because of the noise - I'd never heard anything like it. I woke Luke and told him there'd been a crash,' recalls Tracey. 'I was in panic mode. I went on to the balcony where we could see water whizzing along, taking people off their feet. Everything happened so fast.