I agree... Days?
This is all anecdotal, yet interesting for a movie plot.
But it could be that in subtropical areas, smart people and those without modern building techniques don't live in the low spots that get flooded all the time, they live on a hill, even a modest hill, where it isn't damp.
This will intrigue you.
Hey there...
Yah... not too sure about the "days" part, nor the remote-viewing part. But its also possible that there were tribes of folks that saw the water suddenly recede, and new well enough to head for high ground. Perhaps the "minutes" of warning somehow got transmogrified into "days".
One of the more interesting books I've read was "The Last Navigator" about an American guy that goes to Polynesia to try to study under one of the last surviving tribal navigators. These guys are revered like Shaman in the tribes and they keep their secrets pretty close.
These are the guys that can sail outrigger canoes between islands many hundreds or thousands of miles apart... and they actually pull it off and get where they want to go, with no tools, no charts, nothing but wits.
Turns out that there really is a lot of pretty good ordinary science that these navigators use. They don't have books, but they memorize the rising and setting positions of stars on the horizon throughout the year. They memorize the variations in fish species and bird species in various locales. They learn how to read wave patterns to tell them the weather in distant parts.
It doesn't have to be magic or any sort of "special" communion with nature. There's lots of smart people in the world, and some of them are leaders of tribes in very remote parts of the world. Some of them are Shaman. Some of them are navigators.
Just becuase the dude doing it isn't wearing a white jacket doesn't mean that it isn't just plain old good science developed over many generations.
I agree... Days?
This is all anecdotal, yet interesting for a movie plot.
Don't we already have a show called "Animal Planet"?
As I read the doc, that wouldn't explain it--regardless of you much you might wish it so.
Plenty lived in lowland areas. They just left them days before even the quake.