Earthquake! Tsunami!

Read on for the horror in first-person.

Home was hit by Tidal wave... Practically lost everything.... Family is fine... Thank God... - Ronnietan

... and then tidal waves about 16 feet high hit the West coast of Phuket (Rawai, Patong), the Similans, Koh Lanta, Phi Phi Islands. The wave reached 300 m inland at Patong and swept hundreds of tourists into the sea. - ellie_elephant

There was a kinda big earthquake in my place this morning... It woke me up, and I ran downstairs amazingly fast... That was shocking. I thought this house will be ruined... - Meilathena

Priya and I are safe, barring a nasty shock when she was jerked out of bed early today morning by the quake... - Suresh Ramasubramanian

Thankfully my parents are okay - they have not been affected physically. However we have lost some of our closest friends... - Dhruhini

I am closer to the beach. A church by the beach is supposedly flooded, and there are reports of people being drowned, while in Church. I wonder if they got trapped or something! - notangel78

The beach is totally flooded. Chennai without a beach feels totally weird, even though its only temporary... People around the beach have been forced to evacuate. Looks sad. - Vyshnavi

We had tremors, and floods. Apparently there are dead bodies up the coastline. Fuck... We're fine. But scared. - Rulinian Wexile

I'm scared... My best friend, Alyssa is currently on holiday in Langkawi, Malaysia - Sophia

He was jet-skiing at a beach in Phang-nga province, one of the place that the wave hit hardest. They found his body about 100 metres away from the hotel. - D.M.

The water went out then came back in very, very quickly, taking everything with it. When the water came into the bungalow, we put everything on the beds... All the windows were closed, so the water kept pushing everything up towards the roof. It pushed us up to the roof, then the roof came off and we floated away - Mr Sköld in Daily News

We were standing there taking pictures and the wave started coming back, faster and faster, so we started to run away, faster and faster, but my parents didn’t run fast enough. - Mrs Holmberg in Daily News

Jayanti Lakshmi, 70, had gone shopping with her daughter-in-law in Cuddalore, southern India. Ms Lakshmi returned to find her son and twin grandsons dead in their hut. - BBC

People that were snorkeling were dragged along the coral and washed up on the beach, and people that were sunbathing got washed into the sea. - Simon Clark in CNN

My mate's staying in a police station for the night and luckily she hasn't had to go through the trauma that some of the survivors of the tsunami have had to go through. - Eshin

I feel sad too to see the victim, and the tsunami is 9 mtr high, and it swept out all the living near the beach... - In a post to Meg

People are rushing out from the coastal area into town, ambulance the other way round. Bodies have been found, many still missing, millions worth of assets damage, coastline of Penang is in mess. - calmocean

It's the way of the world. There's only so much we can do against the forces of nature. - Aerna

We called up our friends in South India and Sri Lanka and they are safe. Still, they know people who have been affected and some are still missing. We are all affected. - Dina Mehta

The wave(s) that came were 4-5 m high. If they could pick up those cars and throw them over the fence, we wouldn't have had a chance. - The Command Post

There was an earthquake, after five minutes there was water all around and we ran away. When we came back, our homes had been destroyed - in NDTV

As we watched it became apparent that the sea was behaving very oddly. Waves were not breaking as normal. The sea appeared to be surging. One such surge practically emptied what we could see of the bay. This was followed by the sea moving repidly back into the bay and reaching right up to the promanade area (and possibly beyond) [...] At no time could we make out any people. - Andrew Sutton

Later on we went down to the beach and believe me, the paradise has been changed to hell. We know also for sure that the official figures underestimate the number of casualtiesa, if you think about all the fishermen. - (via)

He recounted hearing what sounded like repeated explosions coming from the coast. When he left his home to investigate, he spotted a wave towering above the tree line about a mile inland. - Yahoo! News

Since I was now sure I was fully awake, I sat on the bed. There it was again. There was a definite tremor in my bed. It went on for another two minutes. - MadMan

I heard an eerie sound that I have never heard before. It was a high pitched sound followed by a deafening roar. I told everyone to run for their life. - Chellappa in Reuters

At 10am (local time) all of a sudden, just out of nowhere, a massive wall of water came through. There are cars upturned and floating, there's debris, there are beach chairs and beach umbrellas, bits of restaurants are starting to float by. - Australian State MP John Hyde in smh.com.au

...her family lives right on the beach. Her frantic phone calls were unanswered. Her husband and teenage son, who just celebrated his birthday a month or two ago, are either homeless or dead. - David Lok

A lot of these were originally compiled by Insomnia