A couple of different perspectives on this one…
First and foremost was looking in on a big city from a short distance away – skyscrapers rose hundreds of feet into the air, and yet they were surrounded by rapidly rising water as waves came crashing in from the nearby ocean. The first few floors appeared to be underwater, but in general the opinion among us onlookers was that everyone in the buildings higher up were still safe … and then a gigantic wave approached that dwarfed an entire building. Everything went dark as we watched the wave hit.
Subsequently, I found myself inside one of the buildings with my friends. We had to use the restroom, but were told because the lower levels were flooded that we’d need to go higher and use the bathroom on the 33rd floor. Soon after we found ourselves looking out over the waterlogged city from some sort of outdoor balcony, and panic began to set in as the waves started crashing closer and closer to our location. A big one crashed over the side of the building and I remember saying to a friend, “So this is how we die…” but we all managed to hold on and survived as the water pulled back after the wave.
Just when we thought that we were in the clear because the waves had seemed to stop, the currents in the water surrounding the building began to churn debris up from the streets and throw it in our direction. We were narrowly missed by mailboxes and a couple of smaller cars, and then when a much larger dump truck was seen tumbling through the surf rapidly in our direction, I remember saying, “We need to get out of here…” just before the scene going dark.
Oddly enough, last week I caught myself watching this series on YouTube about a handful of personal accounts of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean the day after Christmas back in 2004, so I wonder if that’s where some of the imagery came from…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9DMiy_DVok