He and friend Becky Johnson were on a hotel elevator, on their way to the beach, where they planned to get one last hour of Thai sun before heading to the airport.

Outside, a tsunami had crushed the shore, but in the elevator, the only sign that something was wrong came when the lights flickered and water began seeping through the doors ever so slowly. His confused mind raced to find an explanation as ``inhuman, indescribable'' screams pierced the walls from outside.

His answer came when the elevator thrust downward and the doors burst open, revealing a raging river through the Phuket hotel. Dirty water, waist- deep and rising, gushed into the elevator. He and Johnson swam to a door. Outside, people, cars, tables and trees floated by.

They kept swimming and found the structure that would save them: a jungle gym in a nearby play area. They pulled a few other people aboard it, including a woman who clung furiously to her baby as she looked for her 5-year-old boy; they were later reunited.

Green and Johnson are among thousands of Americans who were caught in the tsunami devastation - and among the many who have been recounting their ordeals in interviews and in e-mails home this week.

At least 14 Americans died, and the number is sure to rise as authorities get a clearer picture of the devastation.

Green and Johnson can thank the jungle gym and a palm-leaf roof for saving them.

As Johnson shouted prayers amid the flooding, the thatched roof lodged against the jungle gym, helping shelter them from the last and biggest wave - one that swelled 10 feet over their heads.

``It was a freaky thing the tree protected us. We miraculously didn't get hit,'' Green recalled in a phone interview Thursday night from Singapore.

After the water calmed, Green and Johnson swam 150 yards to the hotel's main entrance. They took stairs to the building's roof, where they spent the rest of the day taking pictures and listening to panicked shrieks warning of additional waves that never came.

``It was ugly and awful. There are some images I will never forget, and some that I might never acknowledge again,'' Green said. ``I am left with an immense respect for the power of nature.''

Green and Johnson, both 28 and Pacific Northwest natives, are friends and first-year teachers at Singapore American School. They were vacationing during the holidays, since teachers abroad are encouraged not to return to the United States their first year to avoid homesickness.

Laura Wales also considers herself one of the lucky ones.

She was packing her bags to leave the picturesque Thai island of Koh Phi Phi when suddenly the wind grew louder, the electricity cut off and water began gushing into her beach bungalow.

Within seconds, a giant wave smashed the one-room hut to pieces. Wales, 29, and her friend, 25-year-old James Hsu, were dragged out to sea. Submerged beneath a shifting ceiling of debris, the California native was certain she was going to die.

``I didn't figure there was any way I was going to make it,'' she said from her hospital room in Bangkok as she recovers from a severe gash to one of her legs, pneumonia and blood poisoning.

Miraculously, the weight above her shifted and she surfaced for a gasp of air that saved her life. Hsu, a fellow Stanford University graduate business student, remains missing.