20 YEARS AFTER THE 2004 TSUNAMI - Forever Changed by the World's Worst Disaster

AN ESTIMATED 230,000 PEOPLE DIED IN THE UNPRECEDENTED CATASTROPHE. NOW SOME OF THE FEW WHO MADE IT OUT ALIVE ARE SHARING THEIR POWERFUL AND PAINFUL LESSONS

- ALEX ROSS & BRIAN BRANT

I Didn’t Know If I Would Be Rescued. That’s Why I Help Others in Crisis The supermodel nearly died, and her boyfriend was killed. The ordeal inspired her global philanthropy

PETRA NEMCOVA 45

Czech supermodel Petra Nemcova’s pelvis shattered in four places when a tidal wave of roiling black water consumed the bungalow in Khao Lak, Thailand, where she and her boyfriend, Simon Atlee, were vacationing in 2004. It was the day after Christmas, and 20 years later Nemcova vividly recalls the excruciating pain she felt while she gripped a palm tree for an “incredibly long” eight hours, hoping for rescue. But she says the agony of hearing children wailing around her— and then, one by one, their deafening silence—was worse. “I couldn’t swim out [to them] because I was trapped by debris,” Nemcova says. “That day, I couldn’t help. I had no choice.”

The devastation had been triggered by a magnitude 9.1 earthquake—the third largest ever recorded-off the coast of Indonesia. The subsequent series of ocean waves, some reaching reported heights of more than 150 ft., are believed to have affected at least 12 countries and killed about 230,000 people, including Nemcova's boyfriend. The horror surprised scientists around the world: A tsunami like that had simply never happened before. "Simon screamed my name, and it was the last time I heard him," Nemcova says of the fashion photographer, whom she had dated for two years. "I barely survived." Atlee's body was recovered more than two months later.