Supermodel Petra Nemcova opens up 20 years after surviving a deadly tsunami

In 2004, supermodel Petra Nemcova was on a dream holiday in Thailand with her boyfriend, fashion photographer Simon Atlee, when a tsunami tore through their bungalow.

Atlee was swept away in the chaos as he called out Nemcova’s name. Nemcova, then 25, survived by clinging to a palm tree for nearly eight hours.

ABC News’ Diane Sawyer interviewed Nemcova in the months following the tragedy. Now, 20 years after one of the deadliest natural disasters in modern history, Petra sits down with Sawyer again to reflect on the horrors of that time and the kindness of the strangers who got her out alive.

“It’s always hard to go back to the moment when my life changed,” Nemcova told Sawyer in an interview that aired Thursday.Good morning America.”

Nemcova and Atlee were packing up to leave a resort in Khao Lak on December 26, 2004, when the tsunami hit and sent massive waves into their bungalow.

As the water pulled them outside, Nemcova said she managed to grab onto the top of a palm tree, clinging to it for nearly eight hours before being rescued.

“I went into this silence, almost like a meditative state, because I knew that if I start to panic, you lose more energy,” Nemcova said of the time. “And I needed all my energy to stay alive.”

As she clung to the tree, Nemcova said she heard the screams of people calling for help, including small children.

“I couldn’t go and swim to them or try to help them because I couldn’t move my legs,” she told Sawyer in their original 2005 interview.

When Atlee’s body was found and formally identified on 3 March 2004, he became one of the nearly 230,000 people believed to have died in the disaster, which also affected parts of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, the Maldives, Myanmar, Somalia and Malaysia.

For Nemcova, it was a miracle of kindness that saved her. When she was found, her clothes had been torn off by the storm and she had suffered a broken pelvis and internal injuries.

The people who rescued Nemcova were strangers who gave her clothes and placed her on a floating mattress to steer her through the debris toward medical attention, she said.

“Those people were ready to risk their lives for strangers,” Nemcova said of her rescuers. “And it shows you the best of humanity.”

Tune in to “Good Morning America” ​​Friday, December 20 at 7 a.m. EST, for more of Diane Sawyer’s interview with Petra Nemcova.