THE horror of the raging water was like "the end of the world", a York survivor said today.

Newlyweds Louise and Greg Harrand are battered and bruised, with the wounds they suffered still raw - but they and their families are just relieved that they have returned home after an ordeal in the Asian tsunami disaster, which left Louise certain she was going to die.

The couple, who run Hedley House hotel in Bootham Terrace, told today how their honeymoon nightmare began when chaos broke out in the reception of the hotel they were staying in moments before the ferocious wave ravaged the Thai island of Ko Phi Phi.

"People started running and screaming. Then we saw the water coming from the beach," said Louise, 31. "We started running. There was a queue of people to get up the stairs of a building. We turned round and there was a wall of water coming towards us.

"It swept us away. We lost contact with each other. I was thrown under and carried along with everything else - furniture, fridges, debris. I felt my bones crack. I was thinking: 'This isn't allowed to happen; I have only been married two weeks'. Then I thought: 'I am going to die'." Louise was pulled to safety and later staggered to the fifth floor of a building after the water had receded.

Greg said: "I thought it was the end of the world. The water was so turbulent - you didn't know which way was up. I went through two shops. I saw a glass window coming towards me. Then all the debris went through first and smashed it."

He grabbed a roof and clung on until the water subsided.

"I was holding on for my life," said the 31-year-old, whose clothes and wedding ring were ripped off in the swirl. Fearing another onslaught, he desperately searched for Louise, while helping to free those trapped in the wreckage.

"I was bare-footed, standing on planks with nails in and glass frames. I had lost my wife and was hoping she wasn't trapped under the debris, because if another wave came she would be dead."

The couple were reunited with help from a German tourist who went in search of Greg, and they borrowed his mobile phone to text home that they were safe, before joining other walking wounded on a fishing trawler to Phuket Harbour where ambulances waited. They arrived home on Wednesday, two weeks early. But they are determined to return to Thailand whose people, they say, cared for the injured even though many of their own families were lost or dead.

Greg's mum, Susan, said: "So many people have lost people, we count our blessings."

Updated: 09:40 Friday, December 31, 2004