"It was an utter disaster. People were hanging onto trees, children were lost out of the arms of their mothers, and then the mothers were just swept away," Allen, clad in shorts, T-shirt and sandals, told AFP as his wife sobbed at his side.

"We started running but soon it was three metres (10 feet) deep. We lost everything, our passports, money," the English tourist in his sixties said at Phuket's airport, where the couple were hoping to join hundreds of other tourists in catching the next flight back to Bangkok.

The scenes on Phuket, replayed in staggering fashion as tidal waves sparked by a massive earthquake off Indonesia killed thousands across Asia, were beyond comprehension for tourists and Thais caught up in what officials have labeled an unprecedented natural disaster.

The beaches were just filling up when a massive wall of water slammed into Phuket and the rest of Thailand's pristine and resort-heavy Andaman coast at about 9:20am (0220 GMT) Sunday in the midst of the kingdom's prime holiday season.

Phuket's major beach town, Patong, was flooded and all shops, kiosks and hotels along the beach were damaged or destroyed. Some were washed away by the waters that carried away debris and tourist "tuk-tuk" taxis.

At least 86 people have died on the island, and 279 throughout the kingdom.

Thirty-year-old Thai hotelier Be Jirapougphathai, his voice cracking with emotion, said that within moments of the first of at least three waves the beaches and streets were awash in struggling and lifeless bodies.

"I tried to save them but the water was moving so fast. Not one or three, but so many children and women" were swept away, said Be, an employee at the Best Western Hotel on Bang Tao beach.

The wave washed out the entire ground floor of the hotel, he said. Looters clad in headscarves raced through the property's upper floors, relieving rooms of their valuables, he added.

A Polish tourist in Phuket narrowly escaped when her hotel was flooded by the wall of water, she told her mother from the island. But everyone who was at the beach was killed, her mother Anna Kobus told Poland's PAP news agency.

"Her hotel was flooded up to the first floor. Everyone who had left for the beach died. Luckily, she and her friend had just minutes before gone up to their room on the fourth floor," Kobus said. "That saved them."

The tidal wave hit without warning in Phuket.

"Just out of nowhere, suddenly the streets are awash and people just running and screaming from the beach," holidaying Australian politician John Hyde told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"All the windows are blown in, debris everywhere."

Australian tourist Raeshell Tang said she and her husband Mark saw the tidal wave hit from their hotel room.

"We just went out onto the balcony to see what the day was going to be like and there it was in front of us, the tidal wave," she told Australia's Channel Nine.

Tourists and residents were reported rushing to higher ground or clogging the road routes to the north heading off the island, which is connected to the mainland by a bridge.

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