A SMART GIRL
WITH FORESIGHT
G'day folks,
Tilly Smith, a 10-year-old girl from
Surrey, England, was spending Christmas vacation of 2004 with her family
on a beach in Phuket, Thailand. As she and her family walked along the
sand, Tilly noticed something strange. The water was bubbling over and
had become frothy. It was nothing that caused any heads to turn but
worried Tilly immensely.
She recalled a lesson she’d received in
school about tsunamis only a few weeks earlier. The class was shown a
video of the ocean just prior to a tsunami and it was overtaken with
froth. Tilly watched the water on the beach and told her parents that
the water was showing signs of an oncoming tsunami.
Her parents were dismissive at first but after her insistence continued
for a few more minutes, her father relented and took her to the resort's
security personnel.
He told them of his daughter’s fear, a theory which
was corroborated seconds later by another guest who informed them that
Sumatra had been hit with an earthquake earlier that day.
Within moments, and less than 10 minutes from when Tilly first noticed
the bubbles, the hotel’s security staff were evacuating the beach. The
ground floor of the resort had just barely been cleared when the tidal
wave hit, decimating a sizable portion of the hotel. The 2004 tsunami
resulted in over 200,000 deaths across the area. In Tilly’s hotel,
though there were numerous injuries, there were no fatalities thanks to
her insistence and swift action.
Clancy's comment: Go, Tilly! Sadly, I lost close friends in that Tsunami.
I'm ...
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