Tilly Smith is a British girl who, at age 10, was credited with saving nearly a hundred foreign tourists at Maikhao Beach (Thailand) by raising the alarm minutes before the arrival of the tsunami caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. She learned about tsunamis in a geography lesson two weeks before the tsunami from her teacher Andrew Kearney at Danes Hill Preparatory School in Oxshott, Surrey. She recognised the receding 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. The beach was evacuated before the tsunami reached shore, and was one of the few beaches on the island with no reported casualties.
On September 9 2005 she received the Thomas Gray Special Award of The Marine Society & Sea Cadets from Second Sea Lord, Vice-Admiral Sir James Burnell-Nugent.
Tilly's family have declined requests to be interviewed by commercial and national broadcasters, but Tilly has appeared at the United Nations in November 2005, meeting Bill Clinton the UN Special Envoy for Tsunami Relief, and at the first year anniversary in Phuket, as part of the campaign to highlight the importance of education.
In December 2005, Tilly was named "Child of the Year" by the French magazine Mon Quotidien. On the First Anniversary of the Official Tsunami Commemorations at Khao Lak, Thailand on December 26 2005, she was given the honour of closing the ceremony with a speech to thousands of spectators which read in part: Asteroid 20002 Tillysmith has been named after her. (See Meanings of asteroid names (20001-21000).)
