A SURVIVOR of the Asian tsunami who had to swim for his life, has told how it took a phone call to his mother in South East Cornwall to find out about the scale of the disaster. Twenty-seven-year-old Phil Punter, a local builder who lives near Upton Cross, was sunbathing on the beach at Beruwela, a coastal resort in Sri Lanka, with his partner, Julia Holloway, of Tavistock, when the first wave hit at 9am. He said with no television and radio people hadn't realised they had been involved in a disaster which had also struck Thailand, India and other areas of Asia. 'We thought what had happened was isolated to us along our coast of Sri Lanka, and we had been hit by huge freak waves. We knew nothing about the earthquake and the tsunami,' he said. 'I couldn't believe it when I spoke to my mum, Jean Punter, at Pensilva, and she told me how terrible everything was. She was very relieved and happy to hear that Julia and I were both safe. The couple had gone out to Sri Lanka for the first time, to spend Christmas there. They were into the eighth day of an idyllic holiday in the sun when the tsunami suddenly struck. Phil says fortunately there were not many on the beach at the time and the fact that it was daylight saved many lives. 'Julia and I were actually sleeping on the sand and were woken by water around our feet. We looked up and suddenly the sea just built up in height, about 15 metres, and we found ourselves running for our lives up the beach,' he said. 'We went straight into our beachside hotel to escape the water, the first rush taking out the first floor. It is difficult to explain, but it wasn't like a huge wave, the sea level just suddenly rose up. It gurgled and then sucked back taking everything in its path with it. 'A group of us then went back down to the beach looking for people who needed help when we realised it was happening again. Everyone was running about in a panic. We got back to the hotel and this time the wave was huge and came up to the second floor. We were on the third floor where we had been staying but by this stage we decided to swim for it out of the hotel before it totally collapsed. 'We were taken to a large conference centre in Columbo which was set up as a refugee camp for holidaymakers. There were about 1,000 of us and many were injured, mainly being cut by glass shattered by the force of the sea,' he said. 'Because we were alright we decided to take our booked flight out and stayed there for four days, before flying back to Heathrow.'