After 18 hours of waiting for the airport to open, passengers on the first flight out of the Maldives into Singapore, landed at Changi Airport, at 12:30 this morning.

The Maldives government has declared a state of emergency after Sunday's tsunami waves covered two thirds of the capital in water. Our reporter Pearl Forss spoke to some of the survivors.
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An idyllic holiday turned into a living nightmare for the Devlin family when tsunami waves more than a metre high swept through the resort they were living in.

Michael Devlin recounted, "It looked like a tornado had hit, the entire area around the pool had been completely destroyed, and buildings, walls had been knocked down.

The water just came behind the third wave, full power, everyone was running, the whole deck around the pool was lifted off, you couldn't see anyone at the pool who was originally there, I ran out and tried to get my kids but I couldn't see them. I had no idea where everyone had gone, everyone had just been washed off the pool house."

11-year-old Tyler Devlin tells us how he and a friend managed to get to safety, "My friend was behind me and he was screaming and it sounded as if I was never ever going to see him again. I got upstairs and my dad was still downstairs and he thought that we were all swept out to sea, then my friend's dad, he told us we were all safe."

Fortunately for the Devlin family, they found each other shortly after the third tsunami wave receded.

Mrs Devlin says, "We feel really really lucky because we saw some of the devastation and my hearts really go out to them."

Singaporean Ee Poh Leng talks about her experience, "We don't know what is going on, all we know is that water is rising and we don't know where to go, don't know what's happening so its just helpless. Fortunately we didn't stay on the beach bungalow because most of them were wiped out."

She recounts her two-year-old daughter's close brush with death, "It was quite bad because we were playing at the beach there and we can see the waves coming through and it was quite fast. So we just had to grab her and run all the way to the hotel."