On the morning of December 26, 2004, 10-year-old Tilly Smith was walking along Mai Khao Beach in Phuket, Thailand, with her family when she noticed something odd about the ocean. The water was not going in and out like it usually does. Instead, it kept coming in and in and in. The surface had white foam on it, like beer, and it was bubbling. The British girl knew right away what these signs meant because of a geography lesson she’d had just two weeks before.
Tilly had learned about tsunamis from her teacher, Andrew Kearney, at Danes Hill School in Oxshott, Surrey. The class watched an old black and white video of the 1946 Aleutian Islands earthquake tsunami. They learned what warning signs to watch for, especially the foamy look of the sea. When Tilly saw the same things on that beach in Thailand, she knew a tsunami was coming and tried to warn her parents. But they couldn’t see any big wave coming and initially dismissed her cries.
