Additional Notes:

No Notes Available

Backstory:

Angel onof the Beach (True Story)


On the morning of December 26, 2004, Tilly Smith was walking along Mai Khao Beach in Phuket, Thailand, with her family. They were on their first overseas holiday together. 
Tilly noticed the water wasn't behaving normally.
"It wasn't calm and it wasn't going in and then out," she recalled. "It was just coming in and in and in."
The sea had turned frothy—"It was sort of sizzling."
Tilly knew exactly what it meant.
Just two weeks earlier, in her geography class at Danes Hill School in Surrey, her teacher Andrew Kearney had shown the class black-and-white footage of the 1946 tsunami that devastated Hawaii. He taught them the warning signs: the sea receding unusually far, frothy bubbling water, the ocean behaving in ways it shouldn't.
Tilly was watching those exact warning signs unfold. She started screaming. "There's going to be a tsunami!"
The sky was clear. The beach was calm.
But Tilly became frantic.
"I'm going," she finally said. "I'm definitely going. There is definitely going to be a tsunami."
Her father Colin heard the urgency in her voice. He decided to trust his daughter.
By coincidence, an English-speaking Japanese man nearby overheard Tilly use the word "tsunami." He'd just heard news of an earthquake in Sumatra. "I think your daughter's right," he said.
Colin alerted the hotel staff. They began evacuating the beach immediately.
Tilly's mother Penny was one of the last to leave. She had to sprint as the water began rushing in behind her.
"I ran," Penny recalled, "and then I thought I was going to die."
They made it to the second floor of the hotel with seconds to spare.
Then the wave hit.
It was 30 feet tall.
Everything on the beach—beds, palm trees, debris—was swept into the swimming pool and beyond. "Even if you hadn't drowned," Penny later said, "you would have been hit by something."
The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami killed over 230,000 people across 14 countries. Entire beaches in Phuket were wiped out. Thousands died.

Lyrics:

                                                  
Tsunami (Angel of the Beach)

Verse One
Tilly was walking along, Mai Khao Beach
Ten years old, overseas
With her family,
She saw the water behave abnormally
The sea was turning to froth
Like in geography
Her teacher showed her footage of ’46 Hawaii
Warning signs of an incoming psunami (tsu-NAH-mee)
She screamed—

CHORUS
There’s gonna be a psunami (tsu-NAH-mee)
 She knew from class, you must act fast
 Her dad could sense the urgency, inside her voice”
There was no choice,
He alerted the hotel staff
There’s gonna be a psunami (tsu-NAH-mee

Verse Two
Over two hundred thousand people died that day
Fourteen countries’, entire beaches blown away
But Mai Khao Beach 
Where Tilly walked, all was okay
No one was hurt, what can you say
While other classmates yawned, she stayed awake
And applied her knowledge in a useful way
Many wonder what would happen, if Tilly hadn’t, sensed those seismic waves

She screamed:

CHORUS
There’s gonna be a psunami (tsu-NAH-mee)
 She knew from class, you must act fast
 Her dad could sense the urgency, inside her voice”
There was no choice,
He alerted the hotel staff
There’s gonna be a psunami (tsu-NAH-mee)

Bridge (Legacy Moment)

 Now known, as the angel of the beach
 You should never underestimate the power of your reach

CHORUS
There’s gonna be a psunami (tsu-NAH-mee)
 She knew from class, you must act fast
 Her dad could sense the urgency, inside her voice”
There was no choice,
He alerted the hotel staff
There’s gonna be a psunami (tsu-NAH-mee)

OUTRO

There’s gonna be a psunami

Copyright 2026 Dan Robinson.  All rights reserved.