Newark couple John and Marjorie Hope remember fleeing their Sri Lanka home during the Boxing Day tsunami 20 years on

Twenty years on since the devastating Boxing Day tsunami in the Indian Ocean, a Newark couple have looked back on the horrific events of that day.

On December 26, 2004, an undersea earthquake with a magnitude of 9.1 struck off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, triggering a tsunami across the Indian Ocean with waves of up to nine metres (30ft) or more when they hit the shoreline.

The tsunami caused one of the largest natural disasters in recorded history, killing an estimated 228,000 people across 15 countries, with Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, the Maldives, and Thailand sustaining massive damage, and Sri Lanka had the second highest casualty rate with 40,000 people losing their lives.

Among those who escaped with their lives were Marjorie and John Hope and their family, who were enjoying a lie in that morning in their holiday home on the island, with plans to enjoy a leisurely breakfast.

In a twist of fate, Marjorie and their daughter Denise, who was visiting the couple at the time, had been on the beach before 9am each morning for the previous 10 days, but on this day decided not to — an act that would save their lives.

John said that the first he knew of any problems his stepdaughter banging on the shower door to tell him that the river, which their property backed onto, was overflowing and flooding the garden with several inches of water on the ground floor.

“The river, which undoubtedly saved us, was a raging torrent,” he said, “Our next door neighbour ran a river safari business and I saw four of his boats swept away.

“As we mopped up, the water level started falling, although as a precaution, one of our Sri Lankan friends had the foresight to move our car to higher ground.”

It was 40 minutes later that the second wave struck, this time causing the family to flee their home just seconds before it was engulfed in nine feet of water, with Marjorie just in her nightie and John in a pair of shorts.

The family made it to their car and made their way to higher ground, at one point stopping to allow two Sri Lankan ladies with their babies to be taken to higher ground before making their way up on the grounds of a temple.

When the water levels began to recede, John made his way back down the hill to inspect the damage and found that while all of the surrounding walls of their home had been flattened, the house itself was still intact but with three feet of mud inside.

Their fridge-freezer and washing machine had been swept down-river and their television was in the front garden — which incredibly still worked after drying out.

After clearing the mud from the ground floor and finding a hotel to stay in nearby seven hours later, the family were realised the scale of the devastation from the tsunami on TV.

“Thankfully the flood had not reached the first floor, although many items on the ground floor had been lost all destroyed,” John said, “We did learn later casualties in our village were relatively light.

“Less than a mile away a train with 1500 passengers had been swept away with only six survivors escaping.”

Arrangements had been made for any tourists to be flown back home, and Denise luckily already had a flight booked for December 27, while Marjorie and John decided to stay and help with the clean-up operation until their flight home, scheduled for January 21.

They also celebrated their third wedding anniversary in the country, and were transported to the ceremony on the back of an elephant.

The couple returned to the island a year later — on December 24, just two days short of the first anniversary of the tsunami — to open a branch of their property business Marjon Enterprises, selling not just Sri Lankan properties, but some from other countries, to help bring income into the country which had been devastated a year earlier.

Now in their 80s, the couple have not been back to Sri Lanka for a number of years, and celebrations this year have been a little subdued as John recovers from a major operation to remove part of his stomach as part of his cancer treatment.

But the couple said that the memories of the tsunami — the good, bad, and the ugly — are still fresh in their minds.