SALISBURY holidaymakers are among the thousands of tourists who were caught up in the Asian tsunami disaster.

Many were enjoying a Christmas break at resorts in Thailand, Sri Lanka and the Maldives when an earthquake off the coast of Indonesia measuring 8.9 on the Richter scale caused the devastating waves which have left tens of thousands dead.

Terry Rossiter, from Salisbury, had a lucky escape when three freak waves - towering up to 20ft high - crashed on to Kata Beach on the Thai island of Phuket.

Moments later the 60-year-old and his wife Mary (47) were engulfed.

A wall that Mrs Rossiter had climbed up to try and escape the water collapsed underneath her.

The couple was swept through a row of palm trees into a gap between two hotels before they were able to climb to safety.

"I thought we were gone," said Mr Rossiter.

"I was watching my wife and I couldn't do anything to help her.

"My mind went blank with fear that she was going to smash into those trees. It was the most frightening thing of my life.

"We watched people being swept along.

"There was nothing we could do about it."

Salisbury's travel companies are now trying to establish how many of their customers were in the affected areas and account for their safety.

Traveller's World says it is attempting to contact a family which was on holiday in the Maldives when the islands were swamped by the waves.

Norman Hughes, senior partner at the company on Catherine Street, was in Calcutta, India, when the disaster struck.

Together with his wife and teenage son, Mr Hughes had been due to travel to the Andaman Islands, off the coast of Burma, later that day.

His business partner Peter Eastaugh said: "Twenty-four hours earlier and they would have been there already. Given that the Andaman Islands were virtually destroyed, it could have been absolutely fatal."

Other holidaymakers who had booked their dream getaway with Traveller's World also had a narrow escape.

Mr Eastaugh said they had clients in Sri Lanka who missed the tsunami by 30 minutes while others had just left Krabi island, off the coast of Phuket, to fly north to Bangkok.

Bath Travel said it was trying to contact two of its customers who had stopped off on a small island off the coast of Thailand as they travelled from Salisbury to New Zealand.

Salisbury firefighter Dan Cooke (31) is a member of Rapid UK, a search and rescue team, which was put on standby within hours of the earthquake.

He said: "The place where Rapid UK's skills would be most needed is Sumatra although we have not been asked by their government to go yet. "We also have small medical teams who are ready to go if required.

"But sadly what is needed most at the moment is body retrieval because of the scale of the disaster."