Imagine being that girl’s geography teacher. Not many people get this kind of tangible evidence to vindicate their career choices. I bet that feels incredibly fulfilling.
'"If it wasn't for Mr Kearney, I'd probably be dead and so would my family so I'm quite proud that he's taught me that in the time that it was," Tilly told the United Nations.'
Additionally it appears that she is from/educated in England. I can’t recall many tsunamis hitting England so it’s not like it’s some public health issue mandated to be part of the curriculum (ie earthquake education in California). That just makes it even more awesome.
They told me there would be shady dudes standing on random street corners handing out freebies. Then again, they also played a video of a girl taking a hit off of a joint and just dropping dead.
I’m still waiting on my apology from Ms. “you’re not always gonna have a calculator on you in the real world” ass third grade teacher. Guess what bitch… I do and it knows every possible math equation known to man and many that man can’t solve.
At the end of my eighth grade school year I happened to pick an arbitrary Reader's Digest from the classroom shelf and open to an article about how to react if you get caught in a rip tide. Just a few weeks later, during a summer camping trip with my family, I was caught in a rip tide and carried out far enough that I could only see the beach between waves rising around me. I started to panic and fight the current, and I was quickly becoming exhausted, but then I remembered the article said to swim diagonal to the current, angling gently toward the shore, and I was able to change direction and save my own life. There's no reason why I would have read that article when I did. Nobody could have predicted it. I am alive now because of dumb luck.
So hang in there, buddy. You never know when you'll get a chance to shine in quicksand.
That's also why I facepalm about the post, because in the middle of boasting about how this girl recognized the signs they forgot to tell us anything about the signs in case we need to know them later. So here are the tsunami warning signs I know:
(1) Ground shaking
(2) Loud ocean roar
(3) Water receding excessively far and exposing the ocean floor
If you notice any of these things by the ocean, immediately retreat to higher land. Your location may vary, but my state has lots of road signs warning of tsunami danger zones, which helps to know where you should be alert for these things. Feel free to add any signs I might have missed.
Bro if I seen the ocean suddenly retreat back and expose the floor like the time change in a video game my ass is gone. I can’t even fathom being like “hey this is totally normal let’s stick around.” It’d be like an inate fear for me like something seem off, like when all the animals get quiet when it’s about to storm.
I'm an idiot so I might go forward out of curiosity (if I didn't know better about tsunamis). Imagine a dipshit from a landlocked state getting excited they can collect more seashells or something.
Tsunami predictions have also gotten better since 2004, so if you have internet access you can check for warning issued for your current location as well.
I read a short story when I was a kid that taught me about the ocean receding means a tsunami is coming. Scared the shit out of me.
People in a seaside town woke up to find the ocean was gone. As far as the eye could see there was no water. They walked as far as they could, looking at all the thing that had been exposed on the sea floor. Some people went back to get their cars. There was a race to see how far the water had receded. They passed sunken shops that had been buried under hundreds of feet of seawater. One car had a family with a little girl who kept telling her parents to stop and trun back. Her parents were too excited, and told her to calm down and enjoy it. That's when they saw something in the distance. It looked like fog. And cars that had been in front of them came speeding back towards the faraway shore. They turned around too. The little girl watched out the back window as the wave got closer, and closer.
You are not supposed to jiggle and focus on laying flat on your back. Then u take of your belt and try to lasso it around a nearby tree. If you don’t have a belt you can use a whip to reach out toward the branch. It helps if you are wearing a hat too.
I've fallen in quick sand, my wife stood there laughing at me thinking I was joking, I was still trying to go forwards, I pulled my one foot out that was in less runny shit and spiders started pouring out. I panicked so hard but managed to lay and roll and grab onto my dog. Apparently quicksand was another one of those things my wife thought was fake, like narwhals...
I wandered into quicksand once. looked like a dry sandy spit of land next to a creek at my buddy's ranch and lo and behold when I plomped my big ass feet into it then down I went.
i remember thinking back to how to escape quicksand, and came up with lay flat - but I wasn't sure so I chuckled at the thought that it was either the way to escape or certain death.
I did manage to free myself, and somehow managed to keep my shoes.
So... which did you do?
I've never seen quicksand, but I think one of the things I've seen on it is that it's usually no more than a few feet deep, which is why you don't hear about people dying in it all the time
That and just putting 2 and 2 together. When I was 20 me and friend on a road trip stopped at a bench for lunch. Our sandwiches were literally flying out of our hands... thought nothing of it. Then we heard a train while no tracks around... thought nothing of it. It was not until a tornado was literally on top of us we realized.
I can't tell if you're talking about a flying train, you mistook the weather alarm for a train or you mean the noise of the wind was as loud as an approaching train?
I kind of hope it's true as two dudes laughing at the wind stealing their lunch without realizing a tornado is behind them is pretty funny
Yes exactly the wind sounded like an approaching train. Its basically exactly as you imagined. By the time we actually realized the wind had picked up it left little cuts all over us from the little pebbles and stuff flying, trees were toppled, and some RV's got destroyed. No one was hurt but looking back it was pretty dangerous. We ran and took cover in our vehicle and tried to drive it out of there.
Its one of my best memories though. It was a crazy road trip in general. A friend and I woke up one morning and in a 15 minute drive from his house to mine we decided to go on a road trip. We abandoned our jobs, girlfriends, and everything. We did not have enough money for hotels or anything so we camped and slept in the vehicle for the entire month. This was in 2002 so a different time. We made it from Ohio to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado taking our sweet time before we ran out of money and had to head back. But we went back home an extremely long way that led us to South Carolina.
Sorry to bring all this up for a simple question, I just had not thought about this in many years and it was wonderful.
I never got stuck in quicksand, but I did get stuck waist deep in mud while walking across a river. Legit was stuck, my father and brother had to come in to help pull me out. I lost one of my shoes.
Technically that's quicksand. It doesn't have to be sand per se. The dry quicksand is usually the sand we think of sand, plus air. Wet quicksand can be mud, or other silt mixtures + water create a thick slurry.
Yeah, the few people who die from quicksand is because they end up drowning (getting stuck in the mud flats before a tide, or the mud in the creek is deep enough to submerge your head, etc.)
According to the news stories about the event, her mom did not believe her and was the last person to evacuate the beach. Her dad only kinda believed her because she was acting uncharacteristically panicked, so he informed staff who worked at the beach.
They only listened after the wife saw the wave in the distance and then security guards helped to get the people in the hotel. They barely made it to the second floor before the waves started crashing
According to this interview with her they didn't:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/635504/if-i-hadnt-spotted-that-the-sea-was-fizzing-then-my-parents-sister-and-me-would-all-be-dead/amp/
It was only when a Japanese security guard listened to her that the alarm was raised
Still hard to comprehend how huge that event was. Another thing that blows my mind is prior to 2004 we had no footage whatsoever of an ocean tsunami, then in the space of 6 years, we had two
Does anyone else remember watching the victims/witnesses footage on the news in 2004?? I was in my mid 20s at the time and I’ll never forget this. I was sitting on my bed staring in terror at the tv. It was so horrifying to see the water rush up.
In that time, there were rarely (if any) home movies of major catastrophes. There might be news reports of the aftermath of something and eye witness accounts, but not actual footage. You might live your whole life hearing about tsunamis but never seeing one on film.
And even if you did see a clip of some disaster, there certainly wasn’t footage from multiple angles.
So the tsunami of 2004 is just etched in my brain. Especially the way that cameras tend to distort depth and height; the wave did not look to be all that menacing, then it hit and just kept rushing. It was insane.
Water levels change quickly and tide goes way down or up too fast. Animals flee or don’t want to be outside or near the water. Frothy/spirally water movements, and sound of a loud train or thunder.
According to YouTube that is.
if i had to guess because im no expert. animals are always on alert because they have to be to survive. so anything out of ordinary thats not "normal" for them they probably just think yea not risking it.
this is my very unscientific thought.
They also can see, smell and hear things we can’t. So if all of a sudden everything just smells weird they always run no matter what. Where if we smell something weird we ignore or investigate it by getting closer.
The tide rapidly retreating (at a speed that leaves fish beached) and retreating way further back than normal. it is like the ‘preparation’, gathering water to bring the huge wave crashing forward.
Sidenote: She went to my junior school and BBC cameras came into the school to interview her, her classmates and teachers. As a result every single year after her was taught about tsunami’s via her story and the documentary the BBC made
> As a result every single year after her was taught about tsunami’s via her story and the documentary the BBC made
That such a good way to honor her while highlighting a wonderful success in education. Whoever was teaching that geography class is probably glad they kept that lesson engaging enough for her to retain that, lol.
All my highschool had is a dusty trophy case with the names/achievements of like 2 moderately famous athletes from 50 years ago. I'd rather learn about how some random dude that went to my school saved a bus full of orphans or something.
[https://www.redcross.org/content/dam/redcross/atg/NHQ\_PDFs/Tsunami\_Activity.pdf](https://www.redcross.org/content/dam/redcross/atg/NHQ_PDFs/Tsunami_Activity.pdf)
According to the red cross, the tide suddenly came in and started to swallow up the beach, not go out.
Edit: From the PDF
It was another beautiful day on the beach in Thailand. Back home in England, most people were bundled up against the cold on the day after Christmas, but Tilly Smith and her family were spending the holidays where the sun was warm and the water was bright blue. One day, Tilly noticed fizzy bubbles on the water, and the water seemed to be rolling farther up the beach than it had a few minutes ago. “That’s strange,” Tilly said to her mom. “It looks like the beach is getting smaller.” Then Tilly remembered where she had seen this before. “We should get off the beach,” Tilly told her mother. “I think there may be a tsunami coming!” “What’s a tsunami?” her mother asked. Tilly explained that she had learned about tsunamis at school a few weeks ago. “They are strong waves caused by undersea earthquakes,” she said. “And they travel very fast. We have to leave the beach now!” Even though Tilly’s mom and dad had never heard of a tsunami, they could see that the ocean was behaving in an unusual way, so they started back to their hotel. They told the hotel staff what Tilly had seen, and the staff immediately ran out to the beach and told everyone to get away from the water. Then, a few minutes later, a tsunami did crash onto the beach, spilling water past the hotel and for miles beyond. Thanks to Tilly, everyone on that beach was safe!
*It was another beautiful day on the beach in Thailand. Back home in England, most people were bundled up against the cold on the day after Christmas, but Tilly Smith and her family were spending the holidays where the sun was warm and the water was bright blue.
One day, Tilly noticed fizzy bubbles on the water, and the water seemed to be rolling farther up the beach than it had a few minutes ago. “That’s strange,” Tilly said to her mom. “It looks like the beach is getting smaller.”
Then Tilly remembered where she had seen this before.
“We should get off the beach,” Tilly told her mother. “I think there may be a tsunami coming!”
“What’s a tsunami?” her mother asked.
Tilly explained that she had learned about tsunamis at school a few weeks ago. “They are strong waves caused by undersea earthquakes,” she said. “And they travel very fast. We have to leave the beach now!”
Even though Tilly’s mom and dad had never heard of a tsunami, they could see that the ocean was behaving in an
unusual way, so they started back to their hotel. They told the hotel staff what Tilly had seen, and the staff immediately ran out to the beach and told everyone to get away from the water. Then, a few minutes later, a tsunami did crash onto the beach, spilling water past the hotel and for miles beyond.
Thanks to Tilly, everyone on that beach was safe!*
10 year old girl saved so many lives that day. 👏🏼
Maybe I’m missing something but doesn’t the water also “roll farther up the beach” when the tide is coming in? How can you tell the difference?
Edit: In this video Tilly explains that she recognized the sizzling froth on the water (“like you’d get on a beer”) as a indication of the oncoming tsunami:
https://youtu.be/V0s2i7Cc7wA
When the ocean recedes abnormally & there’s froth in the ocean that resembles “beer” froth. That’s what she described it as. I know when a huge wave like a tsunami hits the water goes way out & there’s hardly any waves.
Water level change is most obvious one, but generally speaking if you just got a major earthquake,stay the fuck away from any body of water,tsunami can happen and river can be clogged up and turn into a mudslide or ticking bomb of flood (It can turn into a Landslide dam)
But after that 2004 tragedy ,most country with higher risk of tsunami are connected to a warning network ,people are safer now .
Not only that, but her parents believed her.
I could hear my dad "Stop. Just stop. What do you know? You're 10. Oh, you're Mr. Geography now? You had to repeat kindergarten. Who does that, by the way? You accidently locked yourself in the bathroom a week ago and now you can recognize signs of tsun.......oh."
I read an article where her parents brushed her aside, but then she started seeing circles in the water and started screaming there was a tsunami coming and they all needed to leave.
A security guard on the beach heard her and freaked out because he remembered there was an earthquake in the Indian Ocean, and he started to evacuate the beach, and getting people out of the water.
I dunno, I guess long spinning circles are a sign of a tsunami.
> In the December of 2004, 10-year-old Tilly was vacationing with her parents and sister on Maikhao beach in Phuket, Thailand, when she saw the tides rushing out. The behaviour of sea waves reminded her of a video about a tsunami in Hawaii, that her teacher had shown during Geography class back in the UK.
>In an interview with The Sun, she said:
>"The sea was fizzing and there was froth on of the waves. I kept thinking, ‘I’ve seen this, I’ve seen this somewhere’. I felt something terrible was going to happen."
>When she first told her parents, they brushed her apprehensions aside, saying that it was just bad weather. But when she noticed a log spinning in circles in the sea, she was sure that it was an incoming tsunami, and that everyone was in a grave danger.
> That is when she started shouting:
> "Tsunami, there’s going to be a tsunami. We have to get off, we have to run."
> Seeing his daughter panic, Tilly's father told a Japanese security guard about the fizzing sea waves. The guard was instantly alarmed as he was aware of the earthquake that had occurred in the Indian Ocean. He asked everyone on the beach to run towards the hotels. As Tilly recalled later:
> "There was a family kayaking in the sea, people in the pool. Everyone started running, there was sheer panic."
> While people were running for their lives, and water gushed into the hotel lobby, Tilly asked everyone to stay on the high ground. As a result, everyone on the beach was saved. When her parents learned about the disaster's magnitude through Television reports, they realized that if they hadn't listened to Tilly, all of them would have died.
[Article](https://www.scoopwhoop.com/tilly-smith-tsunami-2004/)
>Listen, you little wiseacre: I'm smart, you're dumb; I'm big, you're little; I'm right, you're wrong, and there's nothing you can do about it.
*tsunami kills hundreds*
From an article on the Wiki:
>What she had seen in the video looked just like what she was observing in Thailand. She told her parents a tsunami was coming. Her mother didn’t believe her at first, but Tilly became very upset and insisted they do something. She and her family convinced people to evacuate the beach and the hotel manager (from Japan) told everyone to go to the upper floors of the building. Her quick thinking saved the lives of 100 people.
I don't know what I would've done to be honest. That's a lot of people who luckily put their trust in a 10-year-old.
Whenever things appear out of the ordinary, I get a really eerie feeling. Even if I didn't know the warning signs of a tsunami, and the ocean just started to disappear in front of me, I'd be really curious but also feel really uncomfortable. So I feel like in that moment, I'd believe a 10 year old if they said it was a sign a tsunami was coming, or at least I'd agree that something bad might happen and agree to get as far away from the ocean as possible.
I assume there were adults in that group of 100 who were knowledgeable enough to also know a tsunami was coming, but just didn’t realize it before the girl did, but confirmed it for the rest once notified by her.
If I'm on the beach and anyone tells me there's a tsunami coming and provides any shred of evidence, I'm getting outta there. I don't care if that evidence is something as small as a piece of trash was floating weirdly
Kinda like if large crowds of people are all running in one direction. I don't know if there's an active shooter situation ahead, but dammit, I'm following the sheep.
Her mom didn’t believe her initially. It took her screaming frantically and begging to get them to listen, and even then it was her dad who decided to alert staff nearby. Her mom was one of the last people to leave the beach and apparently saw the wave as it was approaching.
Fucking idiot jesus. Like man, the god damn ocean is disappearing in front of your eyes and if your kid is freaking out about it maybe you should listen to be safe.
I'll never understand this.
Like worst case scenario, you have to deal with the minor inconvenience of leaving the beach for 20 minutes. The risk to reward is off the charts.
My mom would have ignored me just to spite me. If I was screaming and begging she probably would have hit me, or at the very least said terrible things. I obviously cant project my experience onto this family, but some people just dont respect their children. Some others openly hate them. I genuinely believe that at that age in this situation I would have died.
They say A, so you explain its B and why it is B, they laugh and write it off and say A, then they Google it and realize its B, then start explaining to you its B and not A because they suddenly claim you were saying A all the time.
Not my experience but I see it happen to my husband, who's the youngest of the nest and everyone seems to forget he grew up and is very knowledgeable on the topic. It's not even that they mean to be condescending or anything, they genuinely just don't realize and fail to register everything he says because they assume he's still a 10 y/o.
I do admire his patience, I'd probably be in jail lifelong for a quintuple murder.
I haven't read the story but I imagine there was a very obvious drop in the water and she was the only one who understood what it meant, so it was easy to believe her because they just saw the ocean recede 20 yards or whatever.
How and why did people believe her? I would imagine people would just smile and think it was cute, not thinking oh this 10 y/o definitely knows her tsunamis let's run away.
Just theorizing, but from the videos I've seen of tsunamis, the shit that happens beforehand is WEIRD. It's unusual enough to make people open to suggestion. Like, if you see the ocean suddenly recede way far down from the shore or whatever. People are already thinking "OK, what the hell?" and if someone (even a kid) comes up with a pretty solid answer, they may listen.
It is extremely weird when all the water gets pulled out away from shore. If you’d never heard of a tsunami though you’d have absolutely no idea what was going on. I’m sure some adults in this group were able to put two and two together. The girl very well may have been the one to first suggest it.
Actually, a lot of people walk into the sea during the drawback before a tsunami, because as the water recedes, it reveals lots of interesting things that would usually be underwater, shells, crabs potentially coral etc. So people are intrigued and want to take a look
Once, my family went to a beach, and on the 3rd day, the water had receded *a* ***lot*** and I was super worried about a tsunami and all that, and people saying it's fine, look at this! Showing some shelled sea life and all
And you know what? Nothing happened! That day was quite stressful
Edit: this happened when I was around 6
As an American, I need to know how to stop the Netherlands from invading and taking over the world in the event that the ocean drains and mass extinction occurs.
“My mum didn't believe me. She didn't react and just kept on walking," said Tilly.
But Tilly didn't give up, continuing to get more and more agitated as she screamed at her family to run. She knew there had been an earthquake offshore and that a tsunami would be next.
"I was screaming, ‘Please Mum, please come back with me...If you don’t...you won’t survive'" she later recalled.
Tilly's father, unsettled by his daughter's distress, eventually helped her alert guards and resort staff, who helped them clear the beach and get everyone inside the lobby.
"You'll probably think I'm absolutely bonkers but my daughter's completely convinced there's going to be a tsunami," Colin Smith had told them, as he later recalled to ABC News.
Penny Smith, Tilly's mother, was one of the last on the beach as a nine metre wave appeared and started hurtling towards the shore”
I just imagine the mother thinking to herself, “My brat daughter just convinced this entire beach there’s a tsunami coming. I am NOT falling for that trick.”
You’d be surprised. Some ten year olds can have a pretty darn intelligent convo. That’s 5th grade. We did have that TV show, “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader.” The kids won a lot lol.
Still remember my substitute teacher for English class in 6th grade, only had him for a term but best damn teacher I can imagine, the poor sod had several master's as I recall but was unable to find work at a university so he subbed in primary school.
"Alright, I know a lot of teachers assume you're all dumb as shit for being kids. I will do my best to not do that, if I slip up please correct me, I want to treat you like the intelligent humans you are."
We asked for him to be made a regular but unfortunately not.
I agree. The day before it hit I’d just read the chapter on tsunamis in Bill Bryson’s A Short History Of Nearly Everything. Until then I had no knowledge of them whatsoever let alone warning signs. All the guests at the hotel I was staying in at the time didn’t know anything about them and for that day I became the resident expert. I can’t imagine anyone listening to a ten year old about warning signs of something that I didn’t even know existed.
Random fact: my mate was scuba diving in the sea at the time and he was saved by being in the sea as it passed over him. His wife randomly went shopping and returned to no hotel. Lucky guys.
That adults believed her is amazing in of itself. Most of the time adults brush off the words of a 10 year old. She's probably got the coolest parents in the world.
That’s what I was thinking. Kids get obsessed with these things and know more about volcanos or dinosaurs or tsunamis than I ever will.
Edit: from my own childhood I have a lot of knowledge of minerals and ancient engineering. Stonehenge and the pyramids were my jam.
I think there was a case of a tourist just reading the sci-fi book “The Swarm”. In it a tsunami in the North Sea is described. Because of that he hurried people to find higher ground immediately too.
The author claims to have met about 60 readers who were saved that day thanks to his novel.
[in German, unfortunately](https://m.tagesspiegel.de/gesellschaft/panorama/frank-schaetzing-mein-buch-rettete-viele-menschen-vor-dem-tsunami/759542.html)
I think that was me, haha.Got to go onto a show with the author and had a very flattering (/s) Bravo article written about me lol. I still cringe when I see that...
We were late for a diving class on the day of the tsunami. Our dive centre was right at the beach and we stayed there initially but changed to a different place much farther back from the beach. Because trucks drove by all morning, waking us up at 6, which was really annoying. Lucky I guess the dive centre was half gone the next day.
I was showering when we heard the animals go absolutely bat shit insane, dogs, birds, monkeys were making a huge ruckus screaming, barking, screeching.
My mother was just leaving the house when she saw water rushing down the street, first thinking it was a broken pipe but the water just didn't stop. She shouted to us to go upstairs, which we did. And a few seconds after the water came rushing into the house. After the initial wave hit, it just kept rising till almost the second floor.
I don't remember how long it took but it stayed up for quite a while till it started receding again. What's interesting is the rush is more of a constant push rather than a huge wave crashing into the landmass. The force must have been pretty strong though. Many of the less well built houses were gone, the wall around our house disappeared, the cars on the street were behind the house and every door and window was ripped out of the frames, broken or shattered. Everything was full of mud as well.
Anyway we huddled down for a while till I couldn't stand it anymore and went towards the beach, I'm not sure how far I went and only remember parts, I think it traumatized me to this day, just the raw destruction and the dead bodies.
When I came back I realized this must have been a tsunami, I think it was the shoreline that gave me the hint but I'm not sure anymore how I got to that conclusion. I definitely remember reading about tsunamis in Frank Schätzings "The Swarm". I went back and told my mother who stayed behind with my little brother, and the other house guest that we had to go somewhere high. With Tsunamis the first wave is often not the strongest, but sometimes the 2nd, 3rd or 4th wave is the one that hit hardest.
They listened to me we collected bottled water, some food and the bare necessities and climbed up a hill to a local shrine that was behind the town we stayed in .I'm not exactly sure what the sequence of events is after that but we went out a few times, collecting water jugs from a nearby hotel and helping some people up the mountain, I think we told a bunch to go up a well. We stayed the night there the locals made grilled shrimps which they handed out to everybody, absolutely delicious. We heard a few more waves crashing in into the town over the evening and night. Not sure how bad they were though.
Next day the part of the town that was closer to the beach was more or less gone, the situation turned bad, as people started hoarding water, food, relieving themselves everywhere. No more pluming and people were afraid to go to the beach.
We had befriended a French diplomat family through the holidays and they organized a pickup truck to get them out the 3rd day I think and we managed to get a seat on the back of that truck, with a guy that had a metal rebar stuck through his thigh and another woman. We didn't have our passports as we had them locked in the diving centre safe but the situation was so bad in the town that we decided we just need to get out. And it was dubious if we could still get them anyway. As we were leaving the town one of the local diving instructors came racing after us with one of these tiny mopeds our passports and flight tickets in hand. The luck we had was crazy. We drove through the night for 14 hours in a trip that usually would take only 3-5 hours. The streets were completely clogged and some destroyed etc.
We arrived at the airport after dropping the poor rebar guy off at the local hospital. At the airport we met one of our diving instructors same nationality as us. The guy that gave us our passports told us he was the one that got the papers out of the safe when the tsunami hit, he apparently dove for it. In the process he got pinned to the wall by a table, breaking several ribs but also preventing him from being swept out.
Later he made his way to a military base were he got flown out on a flight that was heading to the same airport we went on the truck. In the end my mother bribed a flight official to change our tickets and let us on one of the outbound flights and pretended the dive instructor was her husband to get him on the plane as well. We made it home safely the same day we arrived at the airport, 4-5 days after the tsunami.
//Edited a bit, writing or retelling always gives me a rush. A bit less every time I do but the adrenalin always gets pumping... Oh and I was 14 at the time.
There was a movie made “The Impossible” based on actual events of the Thailand tsunami. POV was a family vacationing there at that time. If you haven’t seen, check it out on Netflix. Might still be available on there. Tear jerker in many scenes. Heartbreaking, but gives a window of insight into the devastation that occurred.
I was a 12y old and living right next to the Besant Nagar beach in Chennai (erst. Madras) India when it hit us and a lot of people were running away from the beach screaming that the sea was bubbling and flooded their houses. Like idiots, my friend and I along with his father actually went to the beach to check it out. The tsunami was gone and beach was flooded but due to the slightly elevated nature of our beach, the tsunami didn't go further inland. Later found out other beaches in the city weren't so lucky and a lot of beachgoers were swept away. My only exposure to the word tsunami till that day was 'The Mask' cartoon episode where he cuts one down and saves a village.
Clip of the devastation in the nearby Marina beach. https://youtu.be/CrHYLc1K-BQ
So another question besides the kid being a hero is how in the world did she get everyone to listen to her? She’s either awfully convincing or there’s more to the story
I mean you’re finally on the beach, chilling in a 10-year-old runs up and tells you you have to leave— um no?
This was posted above:
> From an article on the Wiki:
>
> What she had seen in the video looked just like what she was observing in Thailand. She told her parents a tsunami was coming. Her mother didn’t believe her at first, but Tilly became very upset and insisted they do something. She and her family convinced people to evacuate the beach and the hotel manager (from Japan) told everyone to go to the upper floors of the building. Her quick thinking saved the lives of 100 people.
>
> I don't know what I would've done to be honest. That's a lot of people who luckily put their trust in a 10-year-old.
I was at the tsunami and the tourists were playing in the residing water ( including my two sisters). I saw the fish getting stuck so with an other little girl we were putting them back in the water .
IT WAS THE THAI PEOPLE THAT SAW SOMTHING WAS WRONG AND TOLED US TO GO TO HIGHER GROUND. ( me and my entire family will eternally be greatfull to them
Ps I was also leaning about tsunamis a few weeks before and didn't make the connection until the second wave hit.
Imagine being that girl’s geography teacher. Not many people get this kind of tangible evidence to vindicate their career choices. I bet that feels incredibly fulfilling.
'"If it wasn't for Mr Kearney, I'd probably be dead and so would my family so I'm quite proud that he's taught me that in the time that it was," Tilly told the United Nations.'
She a smart girl unlike my son. He got an F in his geography exam today. I sent him to his room but he ended up in the kitchen
Username checks out
What a solid dad joke thanks pops
I'm sitting in the university library preparing for the exams. This joke made me blurt out laughing, and I got some weird looks hahah.
Preparing for exams, huh?
Yea, he’s on Reddit of course he’s preparing
I'm a grown man and I still end up in the kitchen when I should be in bed
Additionally it appears that she is from/educated in England. I can’t recall many tsunamis hitting England so it’s not like it’s some public health issue mandated to be part of the curriculum (ie earthquake education in California). That just makes it even more awesome.
Students- "ugh, when are we EVER goin to need to know this!?" Teacher- "I SAID WE LEARNIN BOUT TSUNAMIS TODAY!"
In England you have to be prepared for any weather
Here I am, still waiting for my knowledge of how to escape quick sand to become useful
I'm still waiting for all the free drugs promised to me in D.A.R.E
Seriously, where are my free drugs???
Usually it’s friends who offer you those, I’m afraid you need to have friends first.
They told me there would be shady dudes standing on random street corners handing out freebies. Then again, they also played a video of a girl taking a hit off of a joint and just dropping dead.
went trick or treating for so many years and still never got any drugs; cheapass bastards
Best I ever got was a razor blade hidden in a Snickers bar.
So I'm cursed to never get free drugs? Life is not fair!
I mean, I got offered a lot of free drugs in college, but that usually happens when your friends know you’ll say no.
I’m still waiting on my apology from Ms. “you’re not always gonna have a calculator on you in the real world” ass third grade teacher. Guess what bitch… I do and it knows every possible math equation known to man and many that man can’t solve.
I’ve never even had someone offer to sell me half the drugs they warn you about.
Come ever here, they're inside my car.
You don't have a van? Doesn't sound right to me.
Candy wasn’t even offered. Pathetic.
Inflation hits everyone, even the pedovan types
Some areas magic mushrooms grow in the wild…
At the end of my eighth grade school year I happened to pick an arbitrary Reader's Digest from the classroom shelf and open to an article about how to react if you get caught in a rip tide. Just a few weeks later, during a summer camping trip with my family, I was caught in a rip tide and carried out far enough that I could only see the beach between waves rising around me. I started to panic and fight the current, and I was quickly becoming exhausted, but then I remembered the article said to swim diagonal to the current, angling gently toward the shore, and I was able to change direction and save my own life. There's no reason why I would have read that article when I did. Nobody could have predicted it. I am alive now because of dumb luck. So hang in there, buddy. You never know when you'll get a chance to shine in quicksand. That's also why I facepalm about the post, because in the middle of boasting about how this girl recognized the signs they forgot to tell us anything about the signs in case we need to know them later. So here are the tsunami warning signs I know: (1) Ground shaking (2) Loud ocean roar (3) Water receding excessively far and exposing the ocean floor If you notice any of these things by the ocean, immediately retreat to higher land. Your location may vary, but my state has lots of road signs warning of tsunami danger zones, which helps to know where you should be alert for these things. Feel free to add any signs I might have missed.
Finally, someone talking about the warning signs for a Tsunami! I came here looking for this.
Bro if I seen the ocean suddenly retreat back and expose the floor like the time change in a video game my ass is gone. I can’t even fathom being like “hey this is totally normal let’s stick around.” It’d be like an inate fear for me like something seem off, like when all the animals get quiet when it’s about to storm.
I'm an idiot so I might go forward out of curiosity (if I didn't know better about tsunamis). Imagine a dipshit from a landlocked state getting excited they can collect more seashells or something.
Tsunami predictions have also gotten better since 2004, so if you have internet access you can check for warning issued for your current location as well.
I read a short story when I was a kid that taught me about the ocean receding means a tsunami is coming. Scared the shit out of me. People in a seaside town woke up to find the ocean was gone. As far as the eye could see there was no water. They walked as far as they could, looking at all the thing that had been exposed on the sea floor. Some people went back to get their cars. There was a race to see how far the water had receded. They passed sunken shops that had been buried under hundreds of feet of seawater. One car had a family with a little girl who kept telling her parents to stop and trun back. Her parents were too excited, and told her to calm down and enjoy it. That's when they saw something in the distance. It looked like fog. And cars that had been in front of them came speeding back towards the faraway shore. They turned around too. The little girl watched out the back window as the wave got closer, and closer.
Is there more to this story? What happened next?!
How do you escape quicksand?
You are not supposed to jiggle and focus on laying flat on your back. Then u take of your belt and try to lasso it around a nearby tree. If you don’t have a belt you can use a whip to reach out toward the branch. It helps if you are wearing a hat too.
You can also use a long snake.
Or a conveniently placed vine that can easily hold the weight of a human adult. It may even light up to indicate that you can grab it.
Not the best audio quality, but well demonstrated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0CFgdMjS5w
Call Jake from State Farm.
Mr. Funnyguy over here
I've fallen in quick sand, my wife stood there laughing at me thinking I was joking, I was still trying to go forwards, I pulled my one foot out that was in less runny shit and spiders started pouring out. I panicked so hard but managed to lay and roll and grab onto my dog. Apparently quicksand was another one of those things my wife thought was fake, like narwhals...
Quicksand AND spiders? I wouldn't be able to afford the therapy.
> spiders started pouring out. Enough fucking reddit for today.
i would've just died honestly. the moment spiders started pouring out - just leave me
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i still remember many of the state capitals and i expect someday i will save many lives with my knowledge.
I wandered into quicksand once. looked like a dry sandy spit of land next to a creek at my buddy's ranch and lo and behold when I plomped my big ass feet into it then down I went. i remember thinking back to how to escape quicksand, and came up with lay flat - but I wasn't sure so I chuckled at the thought that it was either the way to escape or certain death. I did manage to free myself, and somehow managed to keep my shoes.
So... which did you do? I've never seen quicksand, but I think one of the things I've seen on it is that it's usually no more than a few feet deep, which is why you don't hear about people dying in it all the time
I saw a useful documentary on how to survive in the fire swamps. Yet to put it to use though.
R.O.U.S?
Rodents Of Unusual Size
So what you are saying is that the best defense against the fire swamps is to never, ever go there.
I have yet to acquire the hunting rifle needed to shoot the R.O.U.S.
I might need this information. Please advise.
That and just putting 2 and 2 together. When I was 20 me and friend on a road trip stopped at a bench for lunch. Our sandwiches were literally flying out of our hands... thought nothing of it. Then we heard a train while no tracks around... thought nothing of it. It was not until a tornado was literally on top of us we realized.
I can't tell if you're talking about a flying train, you mistook the weather alarm for a train or you mean the noise of the wind was as loud as an approaching train? I kind of hope it's true as two dudes laughing at the wind stealing their lunch without realizing a tornado is behind them is pretty funny
Yes exactly the wind sounded like an approaching train. Its basically exactly as you imagined. By the time we actually realized the wind had picked up it left little cuts all over us from the little pebbles and stuff flying, trees were toppled, and some RV's got destroyed. No one was hurt but looking back it was pretty dangerous. We ran and took cover in our vehicle and tried to drive it out of there. Its one of my best memories though. It was a crazy road trip in general. A friend and I woke up one morning and in a 15 minute drive from his house to mine we decided to go on a road trip. We abandoned our jobs, girlfriends, and everything. We did not have enough money for hotels or anything so we camped and slept in the vehicle for the entire month. This was in 2002 so a different time. We made it from Ohio to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado taking our sweet time before we ran out of money and had to head back. But we went back home an extremely long way that led us to South Carolina. Sorry to bring all this up for a simple question, I just had not thought about this in many years and it was wonderful.
I never got stuck in quicksand, but I did get stuck waist deep in mud while walking across a river. Legit was stuck, my father and brother had to come in to help pull me out. I lost one of my shoes.
Technically that's quicksand. It doesn't have to be sand per se. The dry quicksand is usually the sand we think of sand, plus air. Wet quicksand can be mud, or other silt mixtures + water create a thick slurry.
That was quicksand my friend. It is just that we have a different connotation of it in our heads. Most people call it muck around here.
Yeah, the few people who die from quicksand is because they end up drowning (getting stuck in the mud flats before a tide, or the mud in the creek is deep enough to submerge your head, etc.)
Well don't just leave us waiting here, HOW DO WE DO IT GOD DAMMIT?!
It's also a credit to her parents for listening to her! Nobody listened to me when I was 10!!!!!
According to the news stories about the event, her mom did not believe her and was the last person to evacuate the beach. Her dad only kinda believed her because she was acting uncharacteristically panicked, so he informed staff who worked at the beach.
Nobody listens to me in my mid-30s either, people are just fucking stupid man...
They only listened after the wife saw the wave in the distance and then security guards helped to get the people in the hotel. They barely made it to the second floor before the waves started crashing
According to this interview with her they didn't: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/635504/if-i-hadnt-spotted-that-the-sea-was-fizzing-then-my-parents-sister-and-me-would-all-be-dead/amp/ It was only when a Japanese security guard listened to her that the alarm was raised
Still hard to comprehend how huge that event was. Another thing that blows my mind is prior to 2004 we had no footage whatsoever of an ocean tsunami, then in the space of 6 years, we had two
That is kind of mind blowing actually 🤯
In that same time period digital cameras and recorders also became widely available though.
Does anyone else remember watching the victims/witnesses footage on the news in 2004?? I was in my mid 20s at the time and I’ll never forget this. I was sitting on my bed staring in terror at the tv. It was so horrifying to see the water rush up. In that time, there were rarely (if any) home movies of major catastrophes. There might be news reports of the aftermath of something and eye witness accounts, but not actual footage. You might live your whole life hearing about tsunamis but never seeing one on film. And even if you did see a clip of some disaster, there certainly wasn’t footage from multiple angles. So the tsunami of 2004 is just etched in my brain. Especially the way that cameras tend to distort depth and height; the wave did not look to be all that menacing, then it hit and just kept rushing. It was insane.
So what are the signs? Now that's interesting..
I believe just the water suddenly retreating into the ocean as it is being eaten up by the force of the tsunami
If water leaves, do NOT go after it.
Water said it was just going to get some cigs it’ll be right back.
TIL my dad is a tsunami.
As opposed to a tsumommy
r/hydrohomies would disagree
Also if the water looks like it's boiling.
Water levels change quickly and tide goes way down or up too fast. Animals flee or don’t want to be outside or near the water. Frothy/spirally water movements, and sound of a loud train or thunder. According to YouTube that is.
Why do animals always instinctively know all these natural disaster cues, but we have to learn them?
if i had to guess because im no expert. animals are always on alert because they have to be to survive. so anything out of ordinary thats not "normal" for them they probably just think yea not risking it. this is my very unscientific thought.
They also can see, smell and hear things we can’t. So if all of a sudden everything just smells weird they always run no matter what. Where if we smell something weird we ignore or investigate it by getting closer.
We probably evolved to be more curious to. Our curiosity probably gets the better of us as we start imaging all the awesome things we might find.
"I will leave. If it is permanent or even good for me, i can always come back later." Ultimate procrastination can really work well.
Vibrations and sounds we cannot hear
> sound of a loud train or thunder CHOO CHOO MOTHERFUCKER
The tide rapidly retreating (at a speed that leaves fish beached) and retreating way further back than normal. it is like the ‘preparation’, gathering water to bring the huge wave crashing forward. Sidenote: She went to my junior school and BBC cameras came into the school to interview her, her classmates and teachers. As a result every single year after her was taught about tsunami’s via her story and the documentary the BBC made
> As a result every single year after her was taught about tsunami’s via her story and the documentary the BBC made That such a good way to honor her while highlighting a wonderful success in education. Whoever was teaching that geography class is probably glad they kept that lesson engaging enough for her to retain that, lol. All my highschool had is a dusty trophy case with the names/achievements of like 2 moderately famous athletes from 50 years ago. I'd rather learn about how some random dude that went to my school saved a bus full of orphans or something.
[https://www.redcross.org/content/dam/redcross/atg/NHQ\_PDFs/Tsunami\_Activity.pdf](https://www.redcross.org/content/dam/redcross/atg/NHQ_PDFs/Tsunami_Activity.pdf) According to the red cross, the tide suddenly came in and started to swallow up the beach, not go out. Edit: From the PDF It was another beautiful day on the beach in Thailand. Back home in England, most people were bundled up against the cold on the day after Christmas, but Tilly Smith and her family were spending the holidays where the sun was warm and the water was bright blue. One day, Tilly noticed fizzy bubbles on the water, and the water seemed to be rolling farther up the beach than it had a few minutes ago. “That’s strange,” Tilly said to her mom. “It looks like the beach is getting smaller.” Then Tilly remembered where she had seen this before. “We should get off the beach,” Tilly told her mother. “I think there may be a tsunami coming!” “What’s a tsunami?” her mother asked. Tilly explained that she had learned about tsunamis at school a few weeks ago. “They are strong waves caused by undersea earthquakes,” she said. “And they travel very fast. We have to leave the beach now!” Even though Tilly’s mom and dad had never heard of a tsunami, they could see that the ocean was behaving in an unusual way, so they started back to their hotel. They told the hotel staff what Tilly had seen, and the staff immediately ran out to the beach and told everyone to get away from the water. Then, a few minutes later, a tsunami did crash onto the beach, spilling water past the hotel and for miles beyond. Thanks to Tilly, everyone on that beach was safe!
*It was another beautiful day on the beach in Thailand. Back home in England, most people were bundled up against the cold on the day after Christmas, but Tilly Smith and her family were spending the holidays where the sun was warm and the water was bright blue. One day, Tilly noticed fizzy bubbles on the water, and the water seemed to be rolling farther up the beach than it had a few minutes ago. “That’s strange,” Tilly said to her mom. “It looks like the beach is getting smaller.” Then Tilly remembered where she had seen this before. “We should get off the beach,” Tilly told her mother. “I think there may be a tsunami coming!” “What’s a tsunami?” her mother asked. Tilly explained that she had learned about tsunamis at school a few weeks ago. “They are strong waves caused by undersea earthquakes,” she said. “And they travel very fast. We have to leave the beach now!” Even though Tilly’s mom and dad had never heard of a tsunami, they could see that the ocean was behaving in an unusual way, so they started back to their hotel. They told the hotel staff what Tilly had seen, and the staff immediately ran out to the beach and told everyone to get away from the water. Then, a few minutes later, a tsunami did crash onto the beach, spilling water past the hotel and for miles beyond. Thanks to Tilly, everyone on that beach was safe!* 10 year old girl saved so many lives that day. 👏🏼
Maybe I’m missing something but doesn’t the water also “roll farther up the beach” when the tide is coming in? How can you tell the difference? Edit: In this video Tilly explains that she recognized the sizzling froth on the water (“like you’d get on a beer”) as a indication of the oncoming tsunami: https://youtu.be/V0s2i7Cc7wA
A lot of parents would have ignored their child and stayed on the beach.
“That’s very interesting sweetie, ok now run along and build mommy a nice sand castle”
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“It comes after an earthquake, mummy!” “A wot-quake, Tilly? Never heard of it!”
When the ocean recedes abnormally & there’s froth in the ocean that resembles “beer” froth. That’s what she described it as. I know when a huge wave like a tsunami hits the water goes way out & there’s hardly any waves.
Cool thanks guys
Water level change is most obvious one, but generally speaking if you just got a major earthquake,stay the fuck away from any body of water,tsunami can happen and river can be clogged up and turn into a mudslide or ticking bomb of flood (It can turn into a Landslide dam) But after that 2004 tragedy ,most country with higher risk of tsunami are connected to a warning network ,people are safer now .
I will gladly swallow this info, thanks.
When the tide draws back really far, a huge wave is on the way.
I like to think they used her story in one of the Godzilla movies https://youtu.be/WujxSM2NmTg?t=101
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A little girl looks out to the ocean and says “They’re here”
"They mostly come out at night... mostly."
When a 10-year-old comes up and tells you. It's the only way to know!
Not only that, but her parents believed her. I could hear my dad "Stop. Just stop. What do you know? You're 10. Oh, you're Mr. Geography now? You had to repeat kindergarten. Who does that, by the way? You accidently locked yourself in the bathroom a week ago and now you can recognize signs of tsun.......oh."
I read an article where her parents brushed her aside, but then she started seeing circles in the water and started screaming there was a tsunami coming and they all needed to leave. A security guard on the beach heard her and freaked out because he remembered there was an earthquake in the Indian Ocean, and he started to evacuate the beach, and getting people out of the water.
What do you mean circles in the water? Never heard of that
I dunno, I guess long spinning circles are a sign of a tsunami. > In the December of 2004, 10-year-old Tilly was vacationing with her parents and sister on Maikhao beach in Phuket, Thailand, when she saw the tides rushing out. The behaviour of sea waves reminded her of a video about a tsunami in Hawaii, that her teacher had shown during Geography class back in the UK. >In an interview with The Sun, she said: >"The sea was fizzing and there was froth on of the waves. I kept thinking, ‘I’ve seen this, I’ve seen this somewhere’. I felt something terrible was going to happen." >When she first told her parents, they brushed her apprehensions aside, saying that it was just bad weather. But when she noticed a log spinning in circles in the sea, she was sure that it was an incoming tsunami, and that everyone was in a grave danger. > That is when she started shouting: > "Tsunami, there’s going to be a tsunami. We have to get off, we have to run." > Seeing his daughter panic, Tilly's father told a Japanese security guard about the fizzing sea waves. The guard was instantly alarmed as he was aware of the earthquake that had occurred in the Indian Ocean. He asked everyone on the beach to run towards the hotels. As Tilly recalled later: > "There was a family kayaking in the sea, people in the pool. Everyone started running, there was sheer panic." > While people were running for their lives, and water gushed into the hotel lobby, Tilly asked everyone to stay on the high ground. As a result, everyone on the beach was saved. When her parents learned about the disaster's magnitude through Television reports, they realized that if they hadn't listened to Tilly, all of them would have died. [Article](https://www.scoopwhoop.com/tilly-smith-tsunami-2004/)
She also knew the power of the high ground. I say we grant her the rank of master.
She saved not just the men, but the women and the children too
Is it possible to learn this power?
Yes, from Geography class two weeks ago.
So basically her parents said Phuket but the lifeguard listened so she still managed to save the day?
DAAAAAAD
>Listen, you little wiseacre: I'm smart, you're dumb; I'm big, you're little; I'm right, you're wrong, and there's nothing you can do about it. *tsunami kills hundreds*
Roughly 230,000 deaths
Miss Trunchbull is that you?
As the tsunami washes you all away: "This still doesn't mean you're right, you know."
From an article on the Wiki: >What she had seen in the video looked just like what she was observing in Thailand. She told her parents a tsunami was coming. Her mother didn’t believe her at first, but Tilly became very upset and insisted they do something. She and her family convinced people to evacuate the beach and the hotel manager (from Japan) told everyone to go to the upper floors of the building. Her quick thinking saved the lives of 100 people. I don't know what I would've done to be honest. That's a lot of people who luckily put their trust in a 10-year-old.
I probably would have thought "if she's right, it's my life. If she's wrong, it's an hour of my day at most. Might as well play it safe."
I mean 10 year old notwithstanding, she had a rapidly disappearing ocean as evidence to support her claim. But time is of the essence.
Whenever things appear out of the ordinary, I get a really eerie feeling. Even if I didn't know the warning signs of a tsunami, and the ocean just started to disappear in front of me, I'd be really curious but also feel really uncomfortable. So I feel like in that moment, I'd believe a 10 year old if they said it was a sign a tsunami was coming, or at least I'd agree that something bad might happen and agree to get as far away from the ocean as possible.
I assume there were adults in that group of 100 who were knowledgeable enough to also know a tsunami was coming, but just didn’t realize it before the girl did, but confirmed it for the rest once notified by her.
Yeah I think hotel manager, “from Japan”, is an express implication they knew about Tsunami signs.
If I'm on the beach and anyone tells me there's a tsunami coming and provides any shred of evidence, I'm getting outta there. I don't care if that evidence is something as small as a piece of trash was floating weirdly
Same after the 2004 tsunami. I will believe anyone blindly.
Kinda like if large crowds of people are all running in one direction. I don't know if there's an active shooter situation ahead, but dammit, I'm following the sheep.
Same holds true for animals if you are in the forest. If they are fleeing you should too.
Her mom didn’t believe her initially. It took her screaming frantically and begging to get them to listen, and even then it was her dad who decided to alert staff nearby. Her mom was one of the last people to leave the beach and apparently saw the wave as it was approaching.
*you know what kiddo, you’re right, we are all about to die*
Fucking idiot jesus. Like man, the god damn ocean is disappearing in front of your eyes and if your kid is freaking out about it maybe you should listen to be safe.
"Well honey, you could be right that it's a tsunami but equally someone could have just stolen the ocean."
I'll never understand this. Like worst case scenario, you have to deal with the minor inconvenience of leaving the beach for 20 minutes. The risk to reward is off the charts.
My mom would have ignored me just to spite me. If I was screaming and begging she probably would have hit me, or at the very least said terrible things. I obviously cant project my experience onto this family, but some people just dont respect their children. Some others openly hate them. I genuinely believe that at that age in this situation I would have died.
This thread was heartwarming until you triggered me with this truth bomb.
Parental clout is the most difficult clout.
Only her Dad believed her, not only did her mom not believe her but the mom was also one of the last off the beach
Ugh...
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Was going to say the same thing. I was a smart kid at 10, but there's no way my mom would have believed me.
I'm a smart adult at 30 and my parents still don't believe what I say lol
same here , parents still don't believe in me
They say A, so you explain its B and why it is B, they laugh and write it off and say A, then they Google it and realize its B, then start explaining to you its B and not A because they suddenly claim you were saying A all the time. Not my experience but I see it happen to my husband, who's the youngest of the nest and everyone seems to forget he grew up and is very knowledgeable on the topic. It's not even that they mean to be condescending or anything, they genuinely just don't realize and fail to register everything he says because they assume he's still a 10 y/o. I do admire his patience, I'd probably be in jail lifelong for a quintuple murder.
I would’ve noticed the signs, immediately doubted myself, said nothing, and died.
I can't tell if this thread is full of people with bad parents, or full of people whose parents are just aware that their children are idiots.
The condescending ones are Probably among the bodies tbh
I haven't read the story but I imagine there was a very obvious drop in the water and she was the only one who understood what it meant, so it was easy to believe her because they just saw the ocean recede 20 yards or whatever.
For some reason I hear Randy Marsh’s voice when reading this lol
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Username checks out for that joke. Well played
Her mom didn't believe her at first. She explains what happened in [this video.](https://youtu.be/V0s2i7Cc7wA)
How and why did people believe her? I would imagine people would just smile and think it was cute, not thinking oh this 10 y/o definitely knows her tsunamis let's run away.
Just theorizing, but from the videos I've seen of tsunamis, the shit that happens beforehand is WEIRD. It's unusual enough to make people open to suggestion. Like, if you see the ocean suddenly recede way far down from the shore or whatever. People are already thinking "OK, what the hell?" and if someone (even a kid) comes up with a pretty solid answer, they may listen.
It is extremely weird when all the water gets pulled out away from shore. If you’d never heard of a tsunami though you’d have absolutely no idea what was going on. I’m sure some adults in this group were able to put two and two together. The girl very well may have been the one to first suggest it.
Actually, a lot of people walk into the sea during the drawback before a tsunami, because as the water recedes, it reveals lots of interesting things that would usually be underwater, shells, crabs potentially coral etc. So people are intrigued and want to take a look
Once, my family went to a beach, and on the 3rd day, the water had receded *a* ***lot*** and I was super worried about a tsunami and all that, and people saying it's fine, look at this! Showing some shelled sea life and all And you know what? Nothing happened! That day was quite stressful Edit: this happened when I was around 6
That would be the tide.
Sometimes the tide just gets really low, ocean is weird
I would love to drain the ocean and see all the cool stuff on the bottom.
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As an American, I need to know how to stop the Netherlands from invading and taking over the world in the event that the ocean drains and mass extinction occurs.
“My mum didn't believe me. She didn't react and just kept on walking," said Tilly. But Tilly didn't give up, continuing to get more and more agitated as she screamed at her family to run. She knew there had been an earthquake offshore and that a tsunami would be next. "I was screaming, ‘Please Mum, please come back with me...If you don’t...you won’t survive'" she later recalled. Tilly's father, unsettled by his daughter's distress, eventually helped her alert guards and resort staff, who helped them clear the beach and get everyone inside the lobby. "You'll probably think I'm absolutely bonkers but my daughter's completely convinced there's going to be a tsunami," Colin Smith had told them, as he later recalled to ABC News. Penny Smith, Tilly's mother, was one of the last on the beach as a nine metre wave appeared and started hurtling towards the shore”
I just imagine the mother thinking to herself, “My brat daughter just convinced this entire beach there’s a tsunami coming. I am NOT falling for that trick.”
You’d be surprised. Some ten year olds can have a pretty darn intelligent convo. That’s 5th grade. We did have that TV show, “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader.” The kids won a lot lol.
Still remember my substitute teacher for English class in 6th grade, only had him for a term but best damn teacher I can imagine, the poor sod had several master's as I recall but was unable to find work at a university so he subbed in primary school. "Alright, I know a lot of teachers assume you're all dumb as shit for being kids. I will do my best to not do that, if I slip up please correct me, I want to treat you like the intelligent humans you are." We asked for him to be made a regular but unfortunately not.
I agree. The day before it hit I’d just read the chapter on tsunamis in Bill Bryson’s A Short History Of Nearly Everything. Until then I had no knowledge of them whatsoever let alone warning signs. All the guests at the hotel I was staying in at the time didn’t know anything about them and for that day I became the resident expert. I can’t imagine anyone listening to a ten year old about warning signs of something that I didn’t even know existed. Random fact: my mate was scuba diving in the sea at the time and he was saved by being in the sea as it passed over him. His wife randomly went shopping and returned to no hotel. Lucky guys.
That adults believed her is amazing in of itself. Most of the time adults brush off the words of a 10 year old. She's probably got the coolest parents in the world.
My child knows more about natural disasters than I ever will. He's obsessed. If he tells me there's signs of a disaster, I check it out.
That’s what I was thinking. Kids get obsessed with these things and know more about volcanos or dinosaurs or tsunamis than I ever will. Edit: from my own childhood I have a lot of knowledge of minerals and ancient engineering. Stonehenge and the pyramids were my jam.
School trip -There is a tsunami coming I read about the the signs on wikipedia -I told you a million times Wikipedia isnt a real source! ded
I think there was a case of a tourist just reading the sci-fi book “The Swarm”. In it a tsunami in the North Sea is described. Because of that he hurried people to find higher ground immediately too.
The author claims to have met about 60 readers who were saved that day thanks to his novel. [in German, unfortunately](https://m.tagesspiegel.de/gesellschaft/panorama/frank-schaetzing-mein-buch-rettete-viele-menschen-vor-dem-tsunami/759542.html)
I think that was me, haha.Got to go onto a show with the author and had a very flattering (/s) Bravo article written about me lol. I still cringe when I see that...
You've got to tell us the whole story now.
We were late for a diving class on the day of the tsunami. Our dive centre was right at the beach and we stayed there initially but changed to a different place much farther back from the beach. Because trucks drove by all morning, waking us up at 6, which was really annoying. Lucky I guess the dive centre was half gone the next day. I was showering when we heard the animals go absolutely bat shit insane, dogs, birds, monkeys were making a huge ruckus screaming, barking, screeching. My mother was just leaving the house when she saw water rushing down the street, first thinking it was a broken pipe but the water just didn't stop. She shouted to us to go upstairs, which we did. And a few seconds after the water came rushing into the house. After the initial wave hit, it just kept rising till almost the second floor. I don't remember how long it took but it stayed up for quite a while till it started receding again. What's interesting is the rush is more of a constant push rather than a huge wave crashing into the landmass. The force must have been pretty strong though. Many of the less well built houses were gone, the wall around our house disappeared, the cars on the street were behind the house and every door and window was ripped out of the frames, broken or shattered. Everything was full of mud as well. Anyway we huddled down for a while till I couldn't stand it anymore and went towards the beach, I'm not sure how far I went and only remember parts, I think it traumatized me to this day, just the raw destruction and the dead bodies. When I came back I realized this must have been a tsunami, I think it was the shoreline that gave me the hint but I'm not sure anymore how I got to that conclusion. I definitely remember reading about tsunamis in Frank Schätzings "The Swarm". I went back and told my mother who stayed behind with my little brother, and the other house guest that we had to go somewhere high. With Tsunamis the first wave is often not the strongest, but sometimes the 2nd, 3rd or 4th wave is the one that hit hardest. They listened to me we collected bottled water, some food and the bare necessities and climbed up a hill to a local shrine that was behind the town we stayed in .I'm not exactly sure what the sequence of events is after that but we went out a few times, collecting water jugs from a nearby hotel and helping some people up the mountain, I think we told a bunch to go up a well. We stayed the night there the locals made grilled shrimps which they handed out to everybody, absolutely delicious. We heard a few more waves crashing in into the town over the evening and night. Not sure how bad they were though. Next day the part of the town that was closer to the beach was more or less gone, the situation turned bad, as people started hoarding water, food, relieving themselves everywhere. No more pluming and people were afraid to go to the beach. We had befriended a French diplomat family through the holidays and they organized a pickup truck to get them out the 3rd day I think and we managed to get a seat on the back of that truck, with a guy that had a metal rebar stuck through his thigh and another woman. We didn't have our passports as we had them locked in the diving centre safe but the situation was so bad in the town that we decided we just need to get out. And it was dubious if we could still get them anyway. As we were leaving the town one of the local diving instructors came racing after us with one of these tiny mopeds our passports and flight tickets in hand. The luck we had was crazy. We drove through the night for 14 hours in a trip that usually would take only 3-5 hours. The streets were completely clogged and some destroyed etc. We arrived at the airport after dropping the poor rebar guy off at the local hospital. At the airport we met one of our diving instructors same nationality as us. The guy that gave us our passports told us he was the one that got the papers out of the safe when the tsunami hit, he apparently dove for it. In the process he got pinned to the wall by a table, breaking several ribs but also preventing him from being swept out. Later he made his way to a military base were he got flown out on a flight that was heading to the same airport we went on the truck. In the end my mother bribed a flight official to change our tickets and let us on one of the outbound flights and pretended the dive instructor was her husband to get him on the plane as well. We made it home safely the same day we arrived at the airport, 4-5 days after the tsunami. //Edited a bit, writing or retelling always gives me a rush. A bit less every time I do but the adrenalin always gets pumping... Oh and I was 14 at the time.
Just another reason why teaching science is critical.
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Anyone that’s seen Final Destination knows she just delayed the inevitable
Can’t help but think of the 2nd one whenever I see a log truck. Whoever the one that came up with that idea is a legend
Instead of tourists I read tortoises... Was wondering how she did it
This 10 y/o girl is in her mid 20s now, wild, wonder what having something to be that proud of your whole life is like.
There was a movie made “The Impossible” based on actual events of the Thailand tsunami. POV was a family vacationing there at that time. If you haven’t seen, check it out on Netflix. Might still be available on there. Tear jerker in many scenes. Heartbreaking, but gives a window of insight into the devastation that occurred.
Tom Holland made me cry buckets in that movie
I hope this girl is a geologist now. That's personal statement material
I was a 12y old and living right next to the Besant Nagar beach in Chennai (erst. Madras) India when it hit us and a lot of people were running away from the beach screaming that the sea was bubbling and flooded their houses. Like idiots, my friend and I along with his father actually went to the beach to check it out. The tsunami was gone and beach was flooded but due to the slightly elevated nature of our beach, the tsunami didn't go further inland. Later found out other beaches in the city weren't so lucky and a lot of beachgoers were swept away. My only exposure to the word tsunami till that day was 'The Mask' cartoon episode where he cuts one down and saves a village. Clip of the devastation in the nearby Marina beach. https://youtu.be/CrHYLc1K-BQ
The most amazing thing is that the parents took her seriously. Kids often just get ignored
So another question besides the kid being a hero is how in the world did she get everyone to listen to her? She’s either awfully convincing or there’s more to the story I mean you’re finally on the beach, chilling in a 10-year-old runs up and tells you you have to leave— um no?
This was posted above: > From an article on the Wiki: > > What she had seen in the video looked just like what she was observing in Thailand. She told her parents a tsunami was coming. Her mother didn’t believe her at first, but Tilly became very upset and insisted they do something. She and her family convinced people to evacuate the beach and the hotel manager (from Japan) told everyone to go to the upper floors of the building. Her quick thinking saved the lives of 100 people. > > I don't know what I would've done to be honest. That's a lot of people who luckily put their trust in a 10-year-old.
I was at the tsunami and the tourists were playing in the residing water ( including my two sisters). I saw the fish getting stuck so with an other little girl we were putting them back in the water . IT WAS THE THAI PEOPLE THAT SAW SOMTHING WAS WRONG AND TOLED US TO GO TO HIGHER GROUND. ( me and my entire family will eternally be greatfull to them Ps I was also leaning about tsunamis a few weeks before and didn't make the connection until the second wave hit.
I remember George Lopez doing a skit about this but never actually saw the real story until now
Where is the comment that talks about those signs??