Leading on the Frontline

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How the Boxing Day Tsunami taught me how to start before I’m ready

When a single event is so traumatic that our hearts are wrung by the sheer horror of it, we discover that for the rest of our lives we remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when we heard the news. It was like that when Princess Diana died and when the Twin Towers fell. So it was when on Boxing Day, 2004, at a time when millions were getting ready to eat turkey leftovers with their families, the whole world heard of the deadly blow delivered by the Asian Tsunami. The scale of it was almost unimaginable: waves up to 100 feet high had killed more than 230 000 people in 14 countries, devastating countless coastal communities. It was one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history.

At the time, I was in Uzbekistan. It was the end of a tough year and an unforgiving winter. Sitting in my room, late in the evening, I switched on my laptop. When I scanned the news headlines I was brought bolt upright with shock. It was the first time I had ever encountered the word ‘tsunami’. I flicked quickly from site to site, feeling a sense of mounting horror. It was clear that, with millions left without food or shelter, the race was on to save lives.

I grabbed my coat and dashed out into the thick snow to look for my closest friend, Habib. It seemed that no one on the streets of Tashkent had yet heard the news. Life continued as normal. A stocky street seller, proudly displaying her knee-length ...