'I survived 2004 tsunami that killed my brother - but I don't feel guilty'
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As a panicked crowd of holidaymakers desperately ran through the back kitchen of a cafe on Thailand's Koh Phi Phi resort, Luke Simon initially thought a gunman was on the loose. Bracing himself as he stepped out into a labyrinth of streets, he even considered the idea that people were running from a rabid dog. He hadn't yet caught sight of the 100ft wave racing towards him.
That early Boxing Day morning in 2004 had begun like any other day in paradise with a leisurely breakfast with his friends Ben Seyfried and Nick Thorne, girlfriend Sophie Moghadam, and brother Piers. They had planned to leave the island later that day to head to Koh Lanta. Instead, they heard the chilling two words: "Water, coming." Sophie.
Luke, then 30, who had been in Thailand for several months working as a PE teacher, looked back at the sea and saw 30ft palm trees had snapped in half, with debris flying at them at 30mph. "The horizon was sort of bubbling up and down because the wave had already hit the shore and then had destroyed anything in its path, and then was coming straight at us," Luke, from Somerset, told the Mirror.
The now-50-year-old led his group to a row of streets he knew that had buildings they could climb and remembers shouting for them to "get high and off the ground." He managed to hoist himself up onto a flimsy, corrugated iron shed and held a hand out for Sophie, with Piers helping to push her up. His friends had been pushed by the water to another alleyway, and as Luke's focus narrowed on Sophie, whose head was covered by water, Piers was suddenly nowhere to be seen.
