A honeymooning couple who escaped the deadly Asian tsunami spoke of their survivors' guilt and of months filled with nightmares.

Staveley newlyweds Steve and Hannah Irwin (pictured ) were so nearly counted among the tsunami dead when the Boxing Day wave put a tragic end to what had been an idyllic honeymoon in Thailand.

Twelve months on, they are looking forward to a future they almost lost and to the birth of their first baby in April.

"It took until spring before I stopped having nightmares and things started to get back to normal," said Mrs Irwin who, with her husband, sprinted away from the surging waters on the paradise island of Phi Phi as boats and buildings were smashed behind them.

Two Thai boatmen who were about to take them on a boat trip were swept to their deaths along with a Swiss woman in their party.

Mrs Irwin said: "The nightmares would vary from going back to that day on the beach to losing family in horrible situations. Also Steve, what if Steve hadn't made it', I had a lot of those.

"It was the whole survivor's guilt thing, we were so, so lucky. People who had been in front of Steve on the beach had died but we were OK, it was a lot of mixed feelings."

For Mrs Irwin, who works for Impact Development Training Group at Windermere, the experience has made her approach life differently.

"You don't worry about money and the little things, you think about the big things," she said. "Everything that's important to you is a million times more important to you. I think more about family and friends now and feel how fragile life is."

In the wake of the disaster, the couple both got involved in fund raising for tsunami relief including through Impact Training which has helped with efforts to rebuild the Thai Navy.

Mr Irwin e-mailed the Phi Phi resort over Christmas to say that their thoughts were with them and now they hoped to return to get involved in rebuilding work still going on around the country.

"I felt too close to it and couldn't have gone this year but we definitely want to go back," said Mrs Irwin. "Steve really wants to go and do something to help.

"Now, I only have the odd nightmare so I guess it's true what they say that time does seem to heal."

There has been no such trauma for forensic dentist John Sellar, of Old Hutton, who has been on four trips to Phuket this year to help identify the bodies of the unlucky thousands killed by the tsunami.

"To be honest, it's a job to do and we did it," said Mr Sellar.

Mr Sellar, who worked as a Kendal GP and dentist for 20 years before turning to forensic work, is used to dealing with grisly experiences. He spends his days working on victims of assaults and child abuse.

"The greatest credit should go to the Thai dentists," he said. "The quality of the work they did was phenomenal and they were working in terrible conditions in temperatures of over 40 degrees Centigrade surrounded by the inevitable smells."

In a testament to the scale of the job, in Phuket there are still 800 bodies awaiting identification.

The exact tsunami death toll is a grim guessing game given the extent of the disaster. Official estimates say between 175,000 and 280,000 people lost their lives while more than a million people were left homeless.

See Year in Review for more ...