Tearful reunions as travellers tell of their escapes

Irish visitors: It was like Christmas Eve a week late at Dublin Airport yesterday as homecoming travellers had tear-filled reunions with their families.

But this time the dominant emotion was one of relief, with those returning telling of narrow escapes from the disaster that has killed tens of thousands.

Ms Louise McClean (26), one of four friends from East Wall, Dublin, described waking up as the tidal wave hit their holiday accommodation on Thailand's Phi Phi Island.

"It was like there was a train going over the bungalow. We didn't know what it was, and we looked out the window and the Thai people were running up to the higher ground.

"By the time we got out of the bungalow we were surrounded by water and we just had to jump in."

The house was some distance away from the beach. "That's why we had a chance," said Ms Jackie Dunne (26).

She was in bed but awake when the wave struck. The only warning was that, moments beforehand, the fan on the ceiling had suddenly stopped.

"We managed to hold on to trees until the water subsided a bit, and we made it on to higher ground. But I thought we were dead, basically."

Fearing a second wave, the group spent 20 hours on a cliff before deciding it was safe to descend.

"There were bodies everywhere, it was horrible," Ms Dunne said.

Most of their belongings were washed away, but a third member of the group, Ms Edel Currie, managed to hold on to her mobile phone. It was through this that their families finally established contact at 4 a.m. on Monday, almost 24 hours after the first reports of the disaster.

Mr Glenn Currie, Edel's brother, explained. "The first I heard of it was when a cousin in Manchester rang me at 8.30 a.m. Sunday, and said: 'Did you see what happened in Thailand?' From then until Monday morning we were trying to contact Edel.

"The Department of Foreign Affairs said all the lines were down, but we should keep sending text messages and one would get through eventually.

"At 4 a.m. Monday, my phone finally said 'message sent', so I ran downstairs and rang her on the landline, and she answered. She said her phone had just beeped."

Also returning to Dublin Airport yesterday were Co Meath couple Mr Conor Martin - a former goalkeeper with the county's Gaelic football team - and Ms Louise Keague.

They were on holiday in Sri Lanka's interior, about to head for the coast, when the news broke.

"The hotel we were going to was wiped out," said Ms Keague. "In fact everything on the itinerary was wiped out. Our driver told us one of his colleagues had been swept into the sea and killed."

The couple were only a few days into their holiday, but as the scale of the disaster unfolded, they decided to abandon it.

"It seemed a little bit rich to be hanging around enjoying ourselves when the country was dealing with this," she added.