SAFE AND SOUND

Friends and family eagerly awaited their arrival at Palma airport yesterday afternoon where the couple were surrounded by journalists and photographers.

Maria Antonia, who managed to contact her parents in Manacor on Sunday to confirm she and her husband were safe and sound, said that they were both on the balcony of their second-floor hotel room when the first of the killer waves hit the popular tourist resort. “I saw a huge wall of water some 10 metres high speeding towards us, sweeping away everything and everyone in its path I did not have time to think, my mind went blank. Luckily we were on the second floor - I guess you could say we won the Christmas Lottery as there were people below swept away, killed and injured.” The psychologist who works in Palma said that she remembers feeling a tremor about two hours before the waves crashed through their resort. “The first wave turned the bedrooms into swimming pools in a matter of seconds. “People saved themselves by hanging on to pillars for dear life,” she said.
Once the situation started to calm, they climbed along to the flat roof over the main hotel building where they met a group of other tourists and locals who she said were all really helpful.

Toni went back to their room to get some clothes and food and then they all headed up a nearby mountain “we stayed there about 14 hours until day break,” she said. “Despite the situation, we all shared out what we had brought with us,” she added.

Eventually they were all picked up by a Thai navy patrol boat and taken to Phuket. “There was a great sense of solidarity, everyone was looking out for each other, we all tried to help each other as much as possible,” she said.
On their flight back to Madrid from Bangkok yesterday were a number of other Spanish holidaymakers caught in the seaquake. The search continues for others, including the businessman from Ibiza.