A HOLIDAYMAKER told how he escaped from his hotel room just in time as the force of the Indian Ocean crashed in behind him.

Retired teacher Harry Barron, 58, described the moment he saw the effects of the devastating Asian earthquake as an enormous wall of ocean came flooding towards him.

Mr Barron, from Kirkby-in-Furness, who was holidaying in Sri Lanka, had just arranged his sun lounger when he returned to his ground floor hotel room to fetch a book.

"I went back into my room to get a book, and I just happened to look up through the glass door and window and saw this water come right over the beach, and across this grassy area just a huge wave almost like a wall of water.

"I just stood there and just looked at it. I was saying no this is not happening at all' and then the water hit the glass door and the window.

"There was a smash of glass and I suddenly realised I needed to be out of there.

"If I had hesitated another second I would not have got out of the room, because the force of the water would have held the door."

Mr Barron made his escape to the first floor, as water crashed through the hotel's ground floor on one side and then out of the other, bringing furniture with it.

Mr Barron, who was staying on the west coast, just north of a town called Kalutara, said he had been unable to stop thinking about the local people he had met who had been badly hit. He decided to tell his story in the hope that it would encourage people to give generously to the disaster appeals.

Neil and Christine Clayton of Backbarrow consider themselves to be doubly lucky.

They are back home safely from a Christmas holiday on the island of Kuramathi in the Maldives, after changing their holiday destination from Barbados at a late stage because of a problem over flights.

Their son, Michael, who lives in Ripponden, near Halifax, had planned to go to the badly affected Sri Lanka, and also changed his plans at the last minute, holidaying safely instead in The Gambia.

The couple, well known through their gift business, Christine Clayton Agencies, were inundated with concerned inquiries from family, friends and customers.

After breakfast on Boxing Day, the couple had noticed that the sea looked slightly strange and then began to "boil", before the ocean appeared to be sucked away.

Mr Clayton, 67, said: "Suddenly it just emptied. It was just sucked out and all the fish were just floundering."

Mr and Mrs Clayton said although their island was relatively unscathed, their holiday company said that six other Maldivian islands with which it dealt had been "wiped out".

Kendal cabinet maker Luke Ham, 24, who works for Peter Hall at Staveley, was able to telephone his parents, Beth and Philip, before they were aware of the disaster.

The former Dallam School pupil was travelling with his girlfriend, and they were walking on the beach on a small island off the Thai resort of Phuket when they were caught in the tidal wave. Mrs Ham said: "They managed to get on to a moped and raced away on it up on to a hill."