Petra Nemcova remembers the Boxing Day tsunami: 'I lost the person closest to me, but I got a second chance to live'

“Boxing Day is always emotional time for me,” says Nemcova now.

“I always light a candle to remember all my loved ones who I cared about and who were impacted by that experience and the others who lost their lives.

"Every Christmas is very special for me, I still keep very strong connections with my adopted family in England, Simon’s mum and her husband and her daughter. Last year I spent the holidays with them, we’re all very close.”

Sitting in Claridge’s in central London, Nemocva could hardly be gracing a more festive spot. A giant upside down tree twinkles nearby, in the tea-room below a boys’ choir is warbling Ding Dong Merrily On High.

Towering (she’s 5ft 11in) with long-blonde hair, Nemcova herself looks like a gorgeous Mother Christmas in a red velvet mini-dress and beige thigh-high boots. “They’re vegan,” she tells me proudly. “And the dress is all ethically produced.”

Nemcova spent the previous evening here, at a gala dinner for Artists For Peace And Justice, which fundraises for Haitian communities, along with other celebrities like Elizabeth Hurley and Nicole Scherzinger, serving dinner to guests who included the Duchess of York. “The charity’s motto is Here To Serve,” she explains. Did she drop anything? “Thankfully not!”  

Nemcova wasn’t just there to waitress, but to receive an award for her work running the Happy Hearts Fund, the charity she established after the tsunami, which rebuilds schools in countries hit by natural disasters, so far opening 171 schools in 10 countries, allowing more than 100,000 children to return to school.

“They went over so many things at the dinner: meaningful videos from colleagues and friends I’ve worked with, so I was crying practically the whole night, I was like ‘I don’t need a napkin, I need a whole towel.’ It was very beautiful,” she says in her accented English.

She was accompanied by her boyfriend, Miami-based businessman Alejandro Grimaldi, as well as by Atlee’s mother and stepfather.

“The topic was women, so I talked a lot about how I have two mums – my English mum and my Czech mum, who have empowered me in different ways. It’s the first time I’ve ever done this, I really put Simon's mother on the spot as she’s very private, but by the end we both had waterfalls on our faces.” Is she proud of Nemcova’s achievements? “She sees it makes me very happy so it makes her happy.”

Nemcova speaks often in touchy-feely clichés, but – though she radiates the same smile that had her scouted in Prague aged 15, kissing me not once, but three times on the cheek – she’s also steelily professional: bashing out an Instagram post, swiping away her constantly ringing phone, booking a table in the restaurant to schmooze a donor before – charmingly but undoubtedly harassedly – turning to me.

To her credit, she’s moved on a long way from the days when she was known for being a Victoria’s Secret model and holding the modelling “accolade” of being cover-girl for Sports Illustrated annual swimwear edition.

Today, she says “Twenty per cent of my life is fashion”, the rest of the time she is travelling tirelessly to the most blighted corners of the world in the aftermath of disasters, such as the Nepal and Haiti earthquakes and the flooding earlier this year in Peru. Often she’s accompanied by Atlee’s friend and once – in Haiti – by his sister Jodi

Her inspiration for the fund came from the kindness she witnessed after the tsunami. Having first clung to a roof, she found herself battered repeatedly by tree trunks and planks and glass in the water, shattering her pelvis in four places.

She was then snatched by the second wave, finding herself, in agony trapped beneath thick debris. As the current started dragging her out she snatched onto the branch of a palm tree, watching in horror as other tourists and locals were swept away.

She stayed there for eight hours, drifting in and out of consciousness in the blazing sun. Her survival, she says, was boosted by her longstanding interest in meditation. “I was very lucky, I’d practised since I was 19 so when the tsunami hit, I could be very focused. Instead of panicking and screaming I went into that mode automatically, and was able to make the right decisions.”

Eventually, rescuers arrived, first a Thai man, who –discovering she was in too much pain to be carried on their backs -  found more Thais and some Swedish tourists to ferry her to land. “They could have been swept away, something could have fallen on them, but they forgot themselves for others.”

The hospital where she was taken was, she says, “like a war zone, so many injured people screaming in pain - there was no morphine – nothing, no beds. It was a very hard place to experience. In the bed next to me was a man who’d had water in his lungs, which means he’d probably been drinking the black water.

He had probably lost everything, definitely his home and his livelihood, hopefully not but probably loved ones. All he had left was his Buddha on his neck and he took that and gave it to me and said ‘He protects you.’

“So I witnessed this unconditional love where people were willing to risk their lives for strangers, people were giving everything they had lost to others. It gives you hope for humanity.”

Nemcova’s pelvis was so badly smashed near her spine that doctors declared it a miracle she wasn’t paralysed; she had also lost half her blood from internal injuries.

 She recuperated in the Czech Republic, but as soon as she could walk again she returned to Thailand, visiting shelters and temporary hospitals where, people told her, their greatest worry was not so much surviving the next few weeks, but how their communities would cope longer-term, after the aid agencies had departed.

“I realised if we could rebuild the school, we impact on not one but many families,” she says. “No matter where you are, every family’s life revolves around school and just knowing the school is open again gives communities a huge amount of strength and hope, it makes them think ‘OK, we can do this.’ And when children go back to school, not only are they receiving an education, but the parents can go back to work and start earning a living.”

Recently, Happy Hearts merged with another charity All Hands Volunteers that supports disaster-relief volunteers, to create All Hands And Hearts, whose aim is to provide both immediate and long-term help to devastated communities.

“At the moment 80 per cent of funds raised go to first response and 20 per cent to rebuilding, which is the wrong way round, but it’s difficult to ask for money later down the line as people have already donated,” Nemcova says crisply. “This way we can allocate funds correctly.”

The daughter of a teacher mother and bricklayer father, Nemcova grew up in a mining village in the dying days of Communism. She was 17 and barely spoke English (“Today I dream in it”) when she left to model in Milan.

“My mother may have worried about me but she was pleased I had the chance to enjoy opportunities she never had and she knew I always had a good head on my shoulders, you can choose to learn from other people or learn the hard way. I heard bad stories about models having their drinks spiked, so for years I only drank bottled water.”

As her life evolves, it can’t be easy constantly having to revisit her old ordeal, but Nemcova does so stoically knowing its fund-raising potential. Since the tsunami, there’ve been various high-profile boyfriends including Sean Penn, singer James Blunt and former Prime Minister of Haiti Laurent Lamothe.

Now she and Grimaldi are based in Miami, where she’s clearly excited to be spending Christmas. “I don’t know if we’ll have a tree, but just time in one place is such a treat,” she beams.

“Tragedy gives us the opportunity to put meaning into our lives,” Nemcova says. “It changes our values, gives us the opportunity to think where we want to go. I lost the person closest to me, but I got a second chance to live.”  

Artists For Peace and Justice is a non-profit organisation that encourages peace and social justice and addresses issues of poverty around the world. Apjnow.org