A SNAP decision to stay in a hotel for five minutes longer probably made the difference between life and death for a Preston family.

The horror of the earthquake catastrophe is only now sinking in for 38-year-old Peter Smith, partner Tracey and children Hannah, 13, and Sebastian, eight, who were holidaying in the resort of Phuket in Thailand.

The family, of Woodway, Fulwood, had gone cycling on the ill-fated day and had planned to stop off at a photo processor's shop before going back to their hotel.

Instead, they went straight to the hotel, and were out of harm's way when the first wave hit at 8am, Thai time, and ravaged through Patonga Beach, where they were staying.

Peter said: "We dashed back to the hotel to use the toilet.

"It was then I heard a woman shouting 'big, big, big'.

"I went out and saw the wave come in, the water was running up the streets, thick black muddy water. Then the next one came. And then everyone panicked, people were running everywhere. It was chaos."

People screamed at them to run and get to higher ground.

Tracey, 38, said: "We were being pushed further and further up. People were having heart failures trying to run because it was so humid and they just couldn't cope with it."

Hours later they returned to their hotel but were caught at the beach as the second wave, or tsunami, struck.

Tracey said: "We rode down to the beach but as we did we saw this water rushing towards us. I've never been so scared in all my life. It was terrifying."

They visited the photo shop the next day and could not believe their eyes.

She said: "There were bodies being pulled out and people scrambling to see their faces.

"We were there when one Thai girl looked through the cloth to look at the body and she recognised them. It was an awful thing to see."

The family joined a search for a young Scottish girl, Ailey, who their daughter had befriended during their two week holiday.

Peter, a keen diver, said: "She told me she was going to do her first dive on Boxing Day and we couldn't find her.

"We searched for two days and you could not believe the relief when we actually saw her. It turned out she'd been doing the dive in a pool rather than in the sea."

The family had gone to Thailand for a Christmas break on December 14.

They had been diving in Phuket the day before the earthquake. They were bombarded with text messages and phone calls from worried friends and family when they landed at Manchester Airport; they had not been able to get through while they were in Thailand.

Peter, a landscape gardener, said: "It's really not hit home yet.

"I've not looked at any of the newspapers or watched the television, then I think it will really affect me."

The huge tidal wave was caused by an earthquake that measured 9 on the Richter scale, the fourth largest in a century.

The official number of people thought to have been killed by the tsunami stands at 60,000 but the real figure could be much higher.

In Thailand, 1,516 are reported to have been killed. On the paradise island of Koh Phi Phi, made famous by the film The Beach, 300 bodies have been recovered; and 700 bodies, many of them tourists, have been pulled from the wreckage of hotels north of Phuket.

The family had feared for the lives of the people they had met during their holiday.

"We'd seen one Thai lady who said she'd seen an old couple swept away in the first wave and we were worried it could have been some of our friends," said Peter, a former pupil of St Cutherbert Mayne High School, now Our Lady's.

"There were eateries along the beach. We went to see if the people who ran them had escaped, luckily they had, they were there, sorting out what was left of their businesses."

The family flew home on December 28, and arrived safely back in Preston on December 29.