December 2004 tsunami: Wales’ survivors remember disaster

A woman who was on holiday in Thailand when a tsunami hit 20 years ago says she would have died if she’d gone to reserve sunbeds as planned.

Karen Jones from Dinas Powys, Vale of Glamorgan, was in Phuket, and feared the worst when she heard panicked Japanese tourists shouting “tsunami”.

“It was my job to go down early that morning to get sunbeds, but I didn’t, and I’m really glad, because if I had gone down, I’d probably be dead,” she said.

It was 20 years ago that information began trickling through on 26 December about a tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

More than 230,000 people in 14 countries were killed, while many are still haunted by the memories of what happened on that day.