On Christmas day, 2004, Chris Xaver arrived in Phuket, a popular tourist destination on the south-west coast of Thailand, for a brief holiday. It was already dark by the time she and her then husband, Scott, got to the hotel; she couldn’t see the ocean, but could smell the saltwater of a beach vacation. The next morning, she had just stepped out of the shower when water started flooding their sea-level bungalow. Thinking the water main had broken, they called the front desk. No answer. Outside the bungalow, they saw the remnants of what they assumed was a rogue wave. “The lexicon, the word tsunami, was not in our brain,” Xaver recalled.
Twenty years on, she remembers standing in an open-air beach restaurant, about 40ft behind Scott, watching another wave approach. A journalist by training, she pulled out her camera to record it. Through the lens, she saw the wave scoop up a Toyota pick-up truck and carry it toward her. “It wasn’t a wall of water, like a Hawaii Five-0 with a curve,” she remembered. “It was just raised water coming at you. I will never, ever forget it.” She had enough time to yell to her husband and jump on a beach chair before she was underwater.
