Survivor of world’s deadliest tsunami recalls the eerie sound she heard before being swept underwater
Topics: Good News
Gregory Robinson
Featured Image Credit: YouTube/laughingplace/Getty Images/Photography by Mangiwau
Topics: Good News
A woman who has trapped for hours after being swept away by a tsunami has shared the terrifying details of the ordeal.
Soffie Modin, 45, was vacationing on Phi Phi Islands in Thailand with her fiancé at the time, Magnus, his brother, and another friend.
On December 26, 2004, their trip took a horrific turn when the group were swept away by a tsunami that claimed thousands of lives.
The group was split up amid the chaos of the tsunami. But before the giant wave hit, Modin recalls hearing a specific, eerie sound.
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“We only heard a sound, like a really loud sound,” she told People. No people screaming, nothing like that, just like a train moving.”
Modin remembers ‘tumbling around and not being able to breathe’ once the tsunami hit, comparing the scary situation to being inside a washing machine.
For the next several hours, Modin was alone inside a house with wire wrapped around her body. She was face down on her stomach and pinned down by planks.
"I had nerve damage in my leg because it was like a big woody thing was pressuring into my stomach," she adds. "So down there at that moment, I thought I would lose my leg totally."
She remembers hearing people crying out for help, realising that the other people were ‘dying around me’.
Modin was eventually rescued and reunited with Magnus, but his brother was killed.
The Swedish native received hospital and home care for the next eight months.
Modin and Magnus are no longer married, but they’re still in touch. She has been remarried for 15 years and has two children.
She recounted her survival story in National Geographic’s documentary, Tsunami: Race Against Time.
"Maybe it's hard [for the younger generation] to understand that it wasn't so easy," she said.
In related news, a video of a man lounging on a beach in Thailand chillingly captured the first waves of a tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people across multiple countries.
Tsunamis are giant waves caused by earthquakes under water.
The quake took place just off of the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
As it happened under the water, it caused a tsunami of ocean waves that devastated many nearby countries.
The earthquake was on 9.1 magnitude, making it the third largest in the world since 1900, and it occurred 18 miles underneath the ocean's surface, as two tectonic plates collided.
The rupture created between the Indian and Burma plates was 800 miles long.
Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, the Maldives, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand all reported the earthquake.