FIVE friends from Lydford celebrated a birthday they will never forget this year, as they were caught up in the Tsunami disaster in Sri Lanka. David Bradford and his fiancée Sara Payge, Christine and Simon Astill and their 11-year-old son Richard travelled to the North East of the island on December 18. They celebrated David?s 50th birthday on Christmas Day, at the resort of Trinkamalee. Christina said: ?When we got there they upgraded us to beach chalets ? we were originally supposed to be in the main hotel. We were in the first floor of the chalets. ?We?d had a wonderful Christmas Day, absolutely fantastic, and we were due to go out on a boat trip the next day. ?At 8.50am I was standing on the balcony and everyone was still asleep. I was thinking ?I wish they?d hurry up?, when I looked out and saw the sea was moving in across the beach, it was almost as if it was being lifted up entirely.? Christina said it was at that point she realised ?something big? was happening and raised the alarm, alerting the rest of the party. Within seconds, the water had risen through the ground floor of the chalet, then reached the first floor. At one point, a guest from the ground floor actually swam up to their apartment. ?It just kept coming and coming and there was nothing we could do, said Christina. Amid the constant sound of breaking glass, the water then ?sucked back?, taking everything with it. ?Tables, chairs ? everything went out with it. At this point Sara and David went down to see if they could help, but they had to get back when we realised it was coming back again,? she said. ?We reckon there were about eight waves altogether, but our building stood, so we were really lucky. The glass had all gone, but there was no structural damage,? said Christina. She said the most frightening moment was being separated from her son, Richard. ?Some local people ran in and one grabbed him and ran with him to higher ground. I couldn?t keep up ? that was really frightening.? Amidst the flood, Christina said there were bizarre pictures that stuck in the mind. ?People downstairs from us had a boat in their room, there was a giant inflatable Father Christmas that went floating past, all the hotel mini bars ? David walked past a tree and a fish fell out.? After being rescued from the wrecked hotel, a rough mini ?field hospital? was set up, with an Australian doctor administering basic first aid. The group were there for a further three hours before being taken to safety in an area unaffected by the Tsunami. ?We actually had a grandstand seat, watching it happen, but we were all unbelievably lucky ? we are certain that people from our hotel died. The phrase guardian angels comes to mind. We were just in the right place, if we had been downstairs, if we had gone out for the boat trip. All those ifs ? it was an incredible thing to experience,? said Christina, who said son Richard was ?brilliant? throughout the trauma. ?I am just so proud of him, there was no panic, he just got on with it.? David, whose birthday had been the previous day, admitted the first day of his 51st year had been ?rather traumatic?, to say the least. ?It wasn?t until later that the magnitude of it started to hit and we started to keep up with the British news,? he said. ?One of the hardest things is not knowing about what happened to the people in the hotel who were with us. ?We?d arranged with the boat guy to go on this trip to Pigeon Island. I think the family that went out first that morning were from Japan ? they just disappeared. ?There were loads of suitcases that weren?t claimed. People were desperate for shoes, but there were shoes that were still there? and people weren?t claiming them,? said David. One couple from Austria, who had been voted the hotel?s most romantic couple on Christmas Day, had been pulled from the surf by an eleven-year-old Tamil boy when the waves first hit. ?They just didn?t speak after that, they were so traumatised,? he said. David likened the ?macabre? atmosphere in those first few moments after the disaster to the eerie feeling during the total eclipse in 1999. ?All the bird life just went, they didn?t come back for a few hours. And there was no rain or wind, it was a beautiful day. People were getting sunburned while they were waiting to be rescued. There was just the rushing noise of the water. ?It all happened so quickly there was no time to panic, it was only afterwards we began to shake. ?I think we are feeling more stressed now than when we were out there. There were so many messages on our answerphones. My staff had been contacting the embassy to see if I was all right ? and Christina just found out we are on a missing persons list.? David said the Tamil people who had helped the tourists had been ?fantastic? and were concerned only for the safety of the visitors. The Tamil area was only just beginning to see tourism and all around there was evidence of buildings burned out during fighting. ?As one guy said to me, ?These boys have lived through bullets and bombs ? now they have had everything destroyed by this,?,? said David.