Tilly Smith learned about tsunamis in a geography lesson two weeks before the tsunami from her teacher Andrew Kearney at Danes Hill School in Oxshott, Surrey. She recognised the symptoms of receding water from the shoreline and frothing bubbles on the surface of the sea and alerted her parents, who warned others on the beach and the staff at the hotel on Phuket where they were staying. The beach was evacuated before the tsunami reached shore, and was one of the few beaches on the island with no reported casualties.
At Danes Hill Preparatory School a cameraman was allowed to follow Smith around for a day to find out what she normally did at school. Andrew Kearney was also interviewed at the school.
Tilly Smith's family declined requests to be interviewed by commercial and national broadcasters, but Smith appeared at the United Nations in November 2005, meeting Bill Clinton the UN Special Envoy for Tsunami Relief, and at the first anniversary in Phuket, as part of the campaign to highlight the importance of education.
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