The tsunami that hit Phuket, Thailand, forced Jillian Searle to make a choice no mother should ever have to make: which son to hold on to in raging flood waters, and which to let go and hope he survived.
Searle, of Perth, Western Australia, was near her Phuket hotel pool with sons Lachie, 5, and Blake, 2, when the tsunami hit last Sunday.
"I knew I had to let go of one of them and I just thought I'd better let go of the one that's the oldest," she said.
"A lady grabbed hold of him for a moment but she had to let him go because she was going under. And I was screaming, trying to find him, and we thought he was dead."
Lachie was found safe two hours later after surviving the raging waters by clinging to a hotel room door.
"I cried for mom for a long time and then I was quiet," he later told his father, Bradley Searle.
With mud and watermarks up to his ears, his first words to his father were: "My hands are all dirty and I need to wash my clothes."
{{/usCountry}}With mud and watermarks up to his ears, his first words to his father were: "My hands are all dirty and I need to wash my clothes."
{{/usCountry}}Jillian Searle said the family was extremely fortunate. "We are just so lucky to walk away with the small children I have got," she said. "I just can't believe they are still here."