A 10-year-old New Zealand girl has been honoured for recognising the approach of Samoa's deadly tsunami and running up and down a beach to warn people.
Wellington schoolgirl Abby Wutzler has been presented with a certificate of commendation for her actions in warning of the approach of the tsunami on September 29.
The honour was bestowed by New Zealand's Ministry of Civil Defence.
The tsunami, triggered by a 8.0 magnitude earthquake, killed at least 143 people in Samoa, as well as 32 in American Samoa and nine in neighbouring Tonga.
Abby was on the beach at the village of Lalomanu when she noticed the sea was retreating and ran up and down the bay, yelling that a tsunami was coming.
She then managed to escape the deadly waves, although many others did not.
"I remember looking under my arms and seeing all these trees just crushing and being crushed in the brown water, just swirling around and killing everything in sight," she told commercial radio.
Her father and brother were among those caught in the waves but both survived uninjured.
Abby's former teacher Kaye Mudge said she taught her pupils about what to do in disasters and had worried she might have overdone it when Abby had nightmares about tsunamis.
It was "the first time in all the 20-odd years I've been teaching that I can be absolutely sure that one thing I said sunk in and was used at the moment it was needed most", she said.
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