Surrounded past her loving family as she relaxed past the puddle on a dream holiday, Maria Belon felt she must be the luckiest woman in the world.

Seconds later, Maria and her terrified husband and three sons were swept away by a ferocious 30ft wall of h2o that devoured everything in its path.

Maria was horrifically wounded every bit she was dragged under water by the devastating Indian Body of water seismic sea wave of Boxing Day 2004.

Afterward being submerged for more than 3 minutes, she finally surfaced and clung on to a tree.

She was petrified, alone and convinced she was dying – simply in a phenomenon that has inspired new motion-picture show The Impossible, the mum and her family survived.

Moments before paradise was smashed to $.25, Maria was on a lounger at the Orchid Resort Hotel in Thailand while her boys, Lucas, 10, Tomas, eight, and Simon, v, were playing nearby with their dad.

The mum watched in horror every bit hubby Quique Alvarez and their two youngest boys were submerged past the roaring mass of dark water that carried with it cars and the chalet the family unit had been staying in.

"Nosotros couldn't meet the moving ridge," says Maria, who is a doctor.

Moving ridge destruction: The aftermath of the tsunami (

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Getty)

"We started to hear a very horrible sound. I was looking around thinking maybe this is only in my listen.

"No one recognised the sound. It felt like the Earth was coming apart but everything looked perfect.

"I was facing the ocean and saw a huge black wall. I didn't think it was the sea. I thought it was a blackness wall coming to get us.

"The two youngest boys were in the swimming pool with my husband.

"Lucas, the eldest, was just in forepart of me. He had just got out of the pool to fetch the ball we had bought them on Christmas Day.

"I screamed to my married man and to the kids. I thought it was the terminate for all of u.s.a.. Lucas was crying out, 'Mama, Mama'.

"Then they all disappeared under water.

"I went through a lot of very hard moments under the water – daze, and fear about the boys.

"I remember being pushed confronting walls. You could feel them trembling and breaking.

"I was non in physical pain but the drowning sensation was like being in a spin dryer.

"The doctors said I was nether water for over 3 minutes because my lungs were full of h2o.

The moving ridge: Stunned tourists scout as the tsunami approaches (

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Aqueduct 4)

"When I came to the surface I wrapped myself effectually a tree and clung on.

"Information technology was so hard to piece of work out what things were because nothing looked normal."

Maria had deep gashes to her breast and a terrible wound on her correct thigh.

But through the agony and confusion she saw something that gladdened her heart.

Maria says: "About fifteen metres abroad I could see a little head, and I thought 'My goodness, I think it's Lucas'.

"After that I heard him screaming for me and then I went to get him.

"In that moment it felt like the most blessed vision I have always had. You lot forget virtually yourself completely.

"You just call back about saving them. I swam across the current and grabbed him. We held on to a tree trunk.

"I was dying, I could feel it happening to me. When I was up the tree, haemorrhage very heavily with very deep wounds, I could feel the dying process.

"I had actually bad internal haemorrhage as well every bit the external wounds."

The hero: Naomi Watts with Maria Belon (

Image:

Getty)

Traumatised and fearing some other huge moving ridge, Maria and Lucas were establish in the tree by a Thai homo who ensured they got to hospital.

Maria says: "The man wouldn't let me to die. He dragged me through the mud for a long time until he was sure I was in good hands."

But Maria was convinced the residue of the family could not accept been and so lucky.

She says: "Non for ane 2d did I believe Quique and my other boys would be alive."

After the seismic sea wave struck, Quique had lost the youngest sons who had been in his arms until the extreme force of the wave sent him crashing into a column on the ground floor of the hotel.

He got washed away only grabbed a tree and clung on for half an hour.

The dad wept, sure the others were drowned.

And then, many agonising minutes later on, he heard Tomas' voice shouting: "Papa! Mama! Lucas! Simon!"

The pair were reunited and perched on the branch of another tree for half an hour.

Then, amazingly, they heard little Simon yelling for help above the roar of rushing water.

However convinced his wife and Lucas were dead, Quique nonetheless teamed upwardly with another grieving husband and decided to search.

Quique had to make the heartbreaking determination to exit Simon and Tomas in the care of strangers on the roof of the hotel.

Inspiration: Maria Belon and her family unit attend the premiere (

Image:

Getty)

After hours traipsing through hospitals full of the wounded, the dying and the bereaved, Quique could hardly believe his eyes when he found his wife and Lucas.

Maria was not out of the wood – fifty-fifty later leaving Thailand she spent 14 months in hospitals in Singapore and their homeland Spain – simply the family's astonishing survival was a rare example of good luck.

The tsunami killed 230,000 people across Thailand, Sri Lanka, Republic of indonesia and 11 other countries.

Eight years have passed since the tragedy but The Impossible is a reminder of how the terror wave afflicted then many.

The flick, the kickoff movie dramatisation of the disaster, is tipped for Oscar success. Kent-born Naomi Watts plays Maria and Ewan McGregor is her husband.

Lucas, who is now 18 and studying medicine at University Higher London, is played past rising British actor Tom Holland, 16.

The stunning recreation of the moment the moving ridge came crashing down on the luxury hotel in Khao Lak is horrific.

Information technology took a twelvemonth to put together the 10-minute sequence.

During the course of filming Maria and Naomi, 44, became close. And as function of the filming process, the family returned to the hotel which has been rebuilt later being flattened past the moving ridge. Amazingly, Maria says the trip "wasn't hard at all".

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She says: "We also went to the hospital. It was good to close the whole process.

"None of us is scared of the sea – it wasn't the sea'south fault. Postal service-traumatic stress is hard to motility on from. Merely you have to move on."

Tomas, who is too studying in Britain, has certainly moved on – he wants to exist a beach life guard.

Maria says they rarely talked about the seismic sea wave when they were back in Spain – and when they did, people didn't believe they had experienced information technology.

Their incredible survival was turned into the film afterward the director, Juan Antonio Bayona, heard her on radio.

"We were terribly lucky in a good and a bad fashion," Maria says.

"Conveying this luck for life is difficult.

"We stayed in touch with the man my husband travelled with while he looked for us. But information technology is hard because the man lost his two babies.

"I learnt what real generosity was through the tsunami. People who didn't know me spent hours looking for my family.

"I was e'er agape of things. The tsunami was an incredible souvenir. I cover life. My whole life is extra fourth dimension."

Moving picture review by David Edwards

Aside from Clint Eastwood'southward underpowered Hereafter, the legacy of 2004's Boxing Day tsunami has nonetheless to get the moving-picture show it deserves... until now.

A sensory overload of emotion and spectacle, The Impossible is a disaster flick much, much better than the usual overblown fare pumped out by Hollywood.

Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts are Henry and Maria who, with their 3 sons, journey to Thailand for a Christmas getaway.

Of course, their vacation turns into a nightmare when the tsunami comes crashing into their resort on December 26, leaving them battered, bruised and scattered.

Equally the relief effort gets underway, Maria and her eldest, Lucas (an impressive Tom Holland), struggle to survive while attempting to find the fate of Henry and the twins.

While it's based on the true story of a Spanish family unit, director Juan Antonio Bayona hasn't been afraid to tweak the facts to maximise the drama.

But go with information technology, nevertheless, and you'll enjoy an intensely emotional disaster movie.

The tsunami itself is terrifically realised with Mother Nature'south fury portrayed in all its terrifying, indiscriminate fury.

As the waves recede, the family'south horrifying situation is realistically captured by Watts and McGregor, who are better than they've been in a long time.

Scenes capturing the pair in an overstretched, blood-marked infirmary are greatly moving, while a sequence where Henry phones home will asphyxiate you up.

You can charge the film of having a thin storyline, and subsequently episodes where the family keep missing one another despite being in the same spot are overdone, simply it earns a whole lot of points for its realism and technical craft.

The Impossible is now showing in cinemas nationwide. Cert 12A, Running fourth dimension 114mins.