A Kiwi family on holiday in Samoa is left shellshocked by the tsunami

Perched high on a ragged cliff face, frantically searching for his family in the swirling waters below, Charles Collins looked down to see his mum Tessa being swept away.

Metres below, his dad Roger and sister Annalysse were clinging desperately to tree roots as the raging torrent engulfed them.

‘I knew Annalysse could have a chance because she'd grabbed on to a root,' the 16-year-old tsunami survivor tells New Idea in an exclusive interview. ‘But when I saw Mum being sucked out I didn't think she'd come back.'

As the powerful surges began to subside, Charles directed his dad to where Annalysse was, but his mum was nowhere to be seen.

Moments later she appeared, wedged beneath the corrugated iron roof of a fale hut.

‘Being trapped stopped her from being washed out,' Charles says. ‘It probably saved her life.'

But the elation at reuniting was short-lived for the Christchurch family, who were holidaying at Samoa's Lalomanu beach when disaster struck. Their focus was to get to higher ground and help those around them.

‘We didn't have time to get excited about finding her,' 21-year-old Annalysse explains. ‘Survival mode kicked in and it was, "Who else is there?" We didn't know whether there were more waves to come.'

What began as a shaky start to the morning quickly turned into a horror-filled sequence of events for the locals and visitors at the popular island destination.

Annalysse was woken by her bed rocking - a prank, she thought, pulled by her brother.

‘When I realised it was an earthquake I thought it was quite cool because I usually get quite excited about thunderstorms and that kind of thing,' she says.

Recalling her training as a flight attendant, the thought of a tsunami crossed Annalysse's mind, but after glancing out the window of their beach hut to check the horizon, she soon jumped back into bed.

No more than 10 minutes later the family were alerted by a young girl screaming, ‘Daddy, Daddy, there's a wave!'

Darting outside to see an enormous wall of water fast approaching the lagoon, they immediately fled to the cliff that was situated around 20 metres behind the village of fales.

‘Dad just told us all to run and I remember looking at the cliff and thinking, "Yeah right, I'm not going to get up there."' says Annalysse, who broke her back three years ago. ‘I thought I was going to die.'

Seconds after the family scrambled up the foliage-covered slope, several powerful waves and relentless surges of water hit the shore.

‘I got up there quicker than the others and saw it come through the village,' Charles says. ‘The houses and concrete toilet blocks were being picked up and disappearing into nothing. It was all headed towards the cliff.'

Annalysse adds, ‘It was like a big soup of debris, full of everyone's luggage, iron roofs, wood, trees, cars and bodies. As we were running for the cliff we heard a car speed off. The wave hit and the next thing we knew the car was coming towards Mum and I. My feet were being pulled from under me and I was being bashed against the cliff. Whenever there was air I took a breath.'

After helping those around them and making their way to the top, the family was desperate to find higher ground. Glancing at the devastation below, they could see the idyllic landscape was destroyed.

‘Everything was just flattened and brown, and the water was draining away. It was so surreal,' Annalysse says.

Wearing what remained of their pyjamas, the Collins and a group of fellow survivors trekked barefoot uphill for about an hour in the blistering heat before reaching the Lalomanu Medical Centre. It was understaffed and inundated with injured people, so Annalysse lent a hand with first-aid.

‘There was only one surgery bed that I can remember, and people were just lying on the floor,' she says. ‘It was like a bloodbath.

‘There were gashes, bare bones, and flaps of hanging skin. Trying to clean out people's wounds was a mission,' she adds. ‘There were distraught mothers cradling their dead children. It was hideous.'

Later that night the family was evacuated to Apia, where they stayed with a Samoan family for the next three days, while their travel arrangements back home were being organised. Amazingly, they escaped with only cuts, bruises and sprains.

‘It's like we were in bubbles,' Annalysse says. ‘We lost the gear we came with but others have lost everything - their loved ones, homes and businesses.'

The family says the kindness they were shown by the Samoan people was humbling, and leaving behind the devastation to resume their normal lives in New Zealand has been difficult.

‘We've been running on adrenaline and shock while trying to keep busy, but you can't just slip back into normal life,' Annalysse says. ‘No one else here can really understand or appreciate what you've been through.'

‘The connection we have to Samoa and their people can't be taken away. It was paradise and will be paradise again.'

By Sarah Mason

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