Airdate: After the Wave

SBS will mark ten years after the Boxing Day Tsunami with a new Australian documentary After The Wave – the untold story of Australia’s extraordinary role in what became the world’s greatest forensic detective operation.

The feature length documentary has been made by production company Flaming Star Films.

The tsunami which hit south-east Asia on December 26, 2004 was the most devastating natural disaster in modern times, claiming a staggering 228,000 victims across 13 countries in a matter of minutes.

In Thailand, one of the hardest countries hit, the first foreigners to arrive on the ground were a crack team of forensic experts from the Australian Federal Police, invited by the Thai government to take a leading role in the disaster zone.

‘We will take them home’ were the words scrawled on the walls of the buildings where bodies of over 4000 Thai locals and international tourists lay. This would become the mantra the forensic team worked relentlessly to uphold.

With Thai infrastructure largely destroyed, dealing with makeshift facilities, sweltering conditions and primitive refrigeration, the forensic team were in a frantic race against time to establish a process to accurately identify the dead. With visual identification of bodies becoming more impossible each day, morgue facilities were set up to collect post-mortem information from the bodies. Meanwhile, police in countries around the world gathered vital ante-mortem data – dental, medical and DNA records to confirm the identity of the bodies.

As forensic squads from more than 30 countries arrived on the ground, many with an interest in only their own citizens, chaos threatened to break. A united effort amongst worldwide forensic squads, expertly negotiated and led by the Australian and Thai teams, saw the eventual identifcation and return of over 4000 loved ones to their families in 40 different countries over 5 years – a remarkable scientific and humanitarian achievement.

After The Wave weaves this story together with harrowing first person accounts from tsunami survivors and families of victims and survivors of the moments before, during and after the wave hit.

Patrice Fayet is swept off his feet, his baby daughter and wife literally torn from his arms in the water. The Breisch family from America are on a boat when the wave hits and sail over the swell, but watch on as the wave reaches land, where their two teenage children lie asleep in a hotel room. Susanne Janson’s daughters are in Thailand on vacation and when they are amongst the thousands listed as missing, she makes the journey from Sweden to the other side of the world to search for them herself.

After The Wave captures the tension of this search for loved ones that stretched on for days, weeks and months. For families who had their loved ones ripped from them in an instant, finding and identifying their bodies so they could be returned to their final resting place was the one thing remaining to cling to amongst overwhelming loss. For other families, it was the joy of a miraculous discovery that their loved ones were in fact alive, against all odds.

After The Wave is a deeply moving, compelling, must-see television event, as we remember and reflect on this ten year anniversary.

Sunday 14 December, 8.30pm on SBS ONE.