The Tsunami Twenty Years After

Padraig O’Leary writing from the vicinity of Colombo now

Twenty Years after the Tsunami

Did the children and I come to you when the waves came?

Were the kids there with you when death came?

In eternity, do you want to be mine again?

Will you come back at least in my dreams?

Those words were written by a grieving husband on the side of a rusting railway carriage at Peraliya in southern Sri Lanka.

 

On 26 December 2004, 36,000 to 50,000 people (the numbers of dead vary depending on the source) died in Sri Lanka in the St Stephen’s Day tsunami. Between 1,700 and 2,500 passengers on the holiday train, Queen of the Sea, perished as the wave engulfed it at Peraliya, between Colombo and Galle. Rescuers recovered only 824 bodies, as many were swept out to sea or were taken away by relatives without informing the authorities. The village itself also suffered heavy losses: hundreds of inhabitants died and out of 420 houses, the great wave spared only ten.

In the Sunday Leader of 24 April 2005 Amantha Perera reported ghoulish voyeuristic impulses of outsiders prevailed: “Tourists, local as well as foreign, are trooping to Peraliya like never before, as if it were the star attraction at an amusement park. There is the [foreign] woman in a reddish pair of shorts and matching top [about to have her picture taken]. ‘Move closer; make sure you get the carriage, okay?’ She shouts instructions as her eyes pan the props for the best spot to pose. After several shots, she asks aloud, ‘What happened here? How many died?’ “

Seismic Subduction

At 0.58 UTC, 6.58 Sri Lanka time, December 26, 2004, there was a seismic subduction on the seabed off the west coast of Sumatra. Scientists called it the great Sumatra-Andaman Earthquake. The earthquake moved a 1,200-km section of the sea floor, releasing energy equivalent to 550 million Hiroshimas. The earthquake was the second largest ever recorded – between 9.1 and 9.3 on the Richter scale. Lasting up to ten minutes, the earthquake had the longest duration ever recorded. The entire planet vibrated about 1cm and there were shocks as far away as Alaska.

Holiday Plans

On Christmas Eve, 2004, we were having dinner with our 95-year-old friend and her son at his plantation bungalow. We were discussing the possibility of a trip to Galle on the south coast or Trincomalee in the northeast. There was a brief hiatus in the thirty-year conflict between the government and the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam). Luckily, we decided to stay put in our home up in the Namunukula Mountains.

On Christmas Day 2004, we had heard news that our local government veterinarian from Poonagalle, whom we knew well, was looking forward to going on a trip to Galle with a party of about 20 people. He and 16 others died. His wife and one of his children survived because they went back to the hotel for a newspaper.

Day of Death

Everyone in Sri Lanka knows someone who lost someone. The wave took away a friend of my wife’s family and her brother in Galle. She was Sri Lankan but lived mainly in London and was here on a short holiday. Her husband was inconsolable and sorry to have survived.

A strange phenomenon occurred in Yala National Park. Few of the animals seemed to have perished because they moved to higher ground before the wave hit. Was this because they sensed the tremors?

At Batticaloa, in the Eastern province, there were 1,200 dead and the naval base at Trincomalee was submerged with about 800 reported dead in that district. In Amparai district in the northeast, the death toll was 5,000. One thousand dead were counted in Mullaithivu, in the Northern Province, which was controlled by the Tamil Tigers. Many of the dead throughout the country were children and elderly people. One and a half million were displaced from their homes.

Infrastructure

Agriculture was badly affected. Vehicles and equipment were ruined. Drains and canals were blocked and water supplies contaminated. 259 square km of paddy land was destroyed or damaged by salinization or deposits of garbage. 23,449 acres of cultivated arable land was affected by salinity

Thousands of houses and other buildings, railways, bridges, communication networks, and other infrastructure and capital assets suffered massive damage. Assets valued at US$ 900 million were lost. 150,000 people lost their livelihoods – 75% of the total fishing fleet was destroyed. 89,000 houses were destroyed. 183 schools were destroyed or damaged, affecting 200,000 children. 102 health facilities were destroyed or damaged. 53 out of 242 large hotels were damaged along with 248 small hotels. A total length of approximately 800 kilometres of national road network and 1,500 kilometres of provincial and local government roads were damaged. The railway infrastructure on a 160- kilometre-long stretch along the tsunami-affected coastline was also severely damaged.

Response to the Deluge

The local relief effort that got underway almost immediately is generally agreed to have been a success despite the understandable confusion which accompanied the effort at times. Even in the poorest, most remote areas people flocked to the roadside to hand over money, clothes, bottles of water and bags of rice and lentils to those in need.

The immediate state response was weak and the government took some time to set up a coordinating committee. A more  effective, spontaneous immediate response was organized locally, followed by the government and international agencies. Temporary shelter for the displaced was provided in schools, other public and religious buildings, and tents. Communities and groups cooperated across barriers that had divided them for decades.

Susantha Goonathilake wrote in his book, Recolonization, about the influence of foreign Non-Governmental Organisations on Sri Lanka: “While NGOs stood wringing their hands or trying to mobilize funds only from international sources, Buddhist temples around the country were the quickest to respond. Those affected by the tsunami rushed into temples where they were received with warmth. These temples along the coast became havens of shelter, not only for Buddhists, but also for Hindus, Muslims and Christians. There are innumerable stories of the incredible generosity of these temples. Monks gave up their robes to bandage victims, looked after their children and babies, fed them from whatever little provisions they had, and comforted them. Illustrative of the genuineness of this response was the remote Eastern province temple of Arantalawa. Here LTTE death squads had once hacked to death young Buddhist monks. Now Arantalawa opened itself to nearly 1,000 refugees, most of whom were from the Tamil community and may well have included the very assassins who had hacked the young Buddhist monks”.

The Sri Lankan response to the tsunami contrasts starkly with US incompetence in dealing with Hurricane Katrina. Sri Lanka’s past investments in a broad-based public health system and community awareness of basic sanitary and hygienic practices ensured that there were no disease outbreaks. Essential medical aid, emergency food, and other relief supplies were mobilized within a day. It was possible to feed, clothe, and shelter survivors; provide the injured with medical attention; and ensure that the thousands of bodies were quickly cremated or buried.

After the Deluge

One month after the tsunami, my wife and I visited Hambantota. We visited again, to take some supplies for the three months dhane, the alms-giving. The journey from our house in the Namunukula region to Hambantota takes around four hours. The distance is not great in European or American terms but there were no motorways then and there are many mountains. In 2005, the roads were not good and the government was fighting a war against a vicious terrorist group, the LTTE, which had established a de facto dictatorship in the north and east.

We set off at about 7.30 a.m. The sun was already strong, but for the first part of the journey through tea country to Ella, the mountains provided shade. Around the Newburgh tea estate, jacaranda mimosifolia, slanting trees with pale, pastel. mauve blossoms, furrowed bark and feathered leaves, reached toward the mountains and gave a cooling effect to the skyscape; the blossoms dusted the winding road blue.

From Wellawaya, the terrain suddenly flattens out and the sun became merciless. A monitor lizard about four feet in length halted the traffic with its saurian saunter across the heat-hazed tarmac.  Once in the safety of the grassy verge, it found the urgency to run. Long-tailed langurs loped across the highway.

Tourism

It is debatable whether tourism is a good thing for any country. It seems to me that relying on tourism is a bit like living on immoral earnings. Whatever about that, it is surprising, considering the beauty of the landscape and the abundance of fauna, that one did not see any foreigners in the area between Wellawaya and Hambantota. All along the roadside are blazing bougainvillea trees in a dazzling variety of colors, not just the usual purple, but orange, white and yellow. Part of the highway is designated ‘elephant corridor’. There are wildlife sanctuaries at Lunuganwehera and Bundula. The main road from Wellawaya to Hambantota runs on a causeway across the Wirawila Wewa. There are vast flat lakes clogged with lotus blossoms.

Water buffaloes luxuriate in the water with egrets perched on their shoulders. Bundula wetland sanctuary covers 62 sq km and has around 150 species of bird, (we saw woolly-necked storks, jacanas, peacocks, their whingeing cry incommensurate with their flamboyance, hornbills) as well as five species of marine turtle, plus marsh and estuarine crocodiles.

Some Sri Lankan tour operators thought the tsunami would give a chance to promote a different brand of tourism, diverting foreign visitors away from the beaches and plush hotels to the excellent nature trails and national parks. Wildlife photographer Gehan de Silva Wijayeratne, (my colleague in those days on Lanka Monthly Digest and Travel Sri Lanka) who is also CEO of Jetwing Eco Holidays, said several rare species of birds and animals can be spotted in many of the country’s natural parks. In fact, we spot a new rare species regularly in our own garden.

The war deterred foreign visitors and when it ended in 2009, the global economic downturn kept them away. Western accusations of war crimes and human rights abuses also deterred visitors.

Destruction

Back in 2005, just outside the town of Hambantota, plastic chairs were stranded on the banks above the stained salt in the lagoons of the Lanka Salt Company. Fishing suffered because of fear that fish were contaminated by corpses. Apparently, there was a greater danger of corpses contaminating the salt.

We saw the first derelict house, then another, then countless. A graveyard was littered with broken trees. Whole villages along the shore were obliterated. Young men in masks carried spades; soldiers and police carried boxes of food and water; girls distributed tea and biscuits. Cargill’s supermarket was boarded up on our first visit and gone completely on our second. The sign outside the Jade Green Restaurant dangled and clanged above holes in the walls. A large dead bat hung from telephone wires near a mosque.

Many houses had been illegally built, so records did not exist to account for the missing. Walls of empty houses were tattooed with telephone numbers and photos of the missing were stuck to trees and telegraph poles.

A canal was clogged with orphaned furniture. A child’s dress swayed from the ceiling in the shell of a house. Saris hung like strange fruit high in the trees. Small slippers sat in the middle of the back lanes. Crushed three-wheelers littered the verges. There was mud everywhere and it seemed as if the earth had halitosis. There were odd reversals – a bus nose-down in the sea; boats marooned in the main street and stacked against a mosque. A mangled telecoms tower jutted from the sea.

Scrawny dogs patrolled the wreckage. There were scare stories in the press about thousands of desperate dogs roaming the night, biting people and eating human corpses. The government veterinary service courageously resisted panic calls for mass slaughter of stray dogs and carried out a programme of mass anti-rabies vaccination and sterilisation.

Distribution of Supplies

Major Gamage, of the Sri Lanka Army, made introductions for us at a temple next to the Grama Niladhari (village official) at Samodarama. All the soldiers we met were compassionate and the Major helped us to target our help for the next visit.

On our next visit, there weren’t as many people at the temple. This did not mean that problems were solved. There was a meeting going on elsewhere. The people who were at the temple insisted that we should hand out the supplies ourselves. Those receiving feel better if they “receive from the hand”, that they have a direct relationship with the giver. The giver can look into the eyes of the receiver.

We distributed rice, lentils, sugar, coconuts, books and pens from the car. The first arrivals were calm and slow; gradually new arrivals became more hurried, breathless, their lateness a sign of having travelled a greater distance than the first-comers. Soon our supplies were gone. The late-comers did have a certain look of panic on their faces. They did show disappointment, but with resignation rather than anger.

An Ecumenical Matter

We were at a Buddhist temple but it was an ecumenical event. Many were Muslims. Some were Christians. Some were Hindus. People seemed to be united in adversity. Nature had not discriminated, although some middle class Christians told us that the disaster was their god’s punishment on heathen Buddhists.

True Buddhism eschews the concept of blame. Karma is not a predestined system for getting your just desserts; it is about dependent origination, cause and effect. Shit happens. Anicca. Everything is impermanence. Some have blamed mankind in general, rather than any one particular faith. In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, published five days after the tsunami, Andrew Browne argued that the human destruction of coral reefs might have a bearing. Coral reefs would have lessened the impact but many have been destroyed by dynamite because they are considered impediments to shipping. The removal of mangroves and sand dunes for coastal residences deprived the coast of natural protection.

One man at the temple said his wife, a teacher, had gone to market with their child. They did not return. A woman could not control her tears as she told about losing her husband in the flood. One woman claimed to have lost 30 of her family. All behaved with dignity but said they had lost their dignity. “We were not rich but we were comfortable. We had a good life. Now we have nothing. We are just like beggars.”

Mr Dissanayake, our local shopkeeper, who was displaced from his home and hotel business on the east coast by the LTTE’s ethnic cleansing in the 1980s, and who had himself been taking vanloads of supplies to Batticaloa, helpfully made parcels of rice and sugar and even made little packages of exercise books and pens for the children.

By the time of this visit, the miasmic odor had gone. Some tents belonged to house-owners camping outside their own houses. A neat sign in magic-marker, in an empty plot at the junction, said “Ayub Khan 348 Tissa Road, Hambantota” to stake a claim against squatters. A gathering of orange-robed priests sat under a battered sign: “Baby’s Dream Pre-school”. Some broken houses were festooned with washing and had goats and chickens in the yard.

Militarisation

There are complaints in Sri Lanka about militarisation. Twenty years ago, 20,000 soldiers were deployed to assist in relief operations and maintain law and order. On our visit three months after the tsunami, there was no sign of the army. There were portakabins bearing the legend “greetings from the Kingdom of Kuwait”. There were tents everywhere belonging to UNHCR, Muslim organizations, Sarvodaya and other NGOs. An Irish NGO was much in evidence – GOAL is the lead agency for temporary shelter reconstruction in Hambantota. GOAL volunteers were distributing family kits consisting of mosquito nets, bed sheets, kitchen utensils and underwear. Working with local fishing communities GOAL provided funding for repair and regeneration projects. GOAL’s local partner ‘Women’s Development Foundation’ distributed underwear and sanitary items. GOAL bought and distributed 140 bicycles to local NGOs to help them get around the area and supported 144 workers cleaning up the beaches and other areas.

International Response

There was a feel-good factor internationally as people rushed to make donations for the relief effort. Tessa Doe was a friend I met on a tour of South India many years ago. Tessa and Frank lived in rural Wiltshire in the UK. Tessa sent me some cuttings from her local newspapers showing what the residents of Seend Cleeve and Melksham were doing in response to the disaster.

Melksham resident Pete King took it upon himself to travel to Sri Lanka to deliver and distribute 700 kilos worth of supplies from Wiltshire hospitals and pharmacies which Krishan Perera of Sri Lankan Airlines agreed to carry free of charge (the same man was very helpful to us when we transported our three cats from Ireland to Sri Lanka). Pete King reported: “Over the last two weeks I have seen many individuals in Sri Lanka doing their bit … every little effort helps”.

Seend village primary school organized bring and buy sales. One pupil, Hannah, was in Thailand when the tsunami struck but was safely inland. Many of the pupils expressed empathy with those who were suffering. Jenny said: “It’s amazing how the whole world is sticking together and sending money to the places worst affected. Even if people didn’t get killed themselves, they probably have lost family and have nothing”.

Seven-year-old Liam Cutler was so upset by his Aunt Sara Mapp’s experience in Thailand that, according to his mother, he “stayed very quiet. He always keeps his worries inside him.” He asked to speak to a teacher in private and came up with the idea of setting up a cake stall for the benefit of tsunami victims. “He has organized the whole thing himself. He got most of the parents making cakes and the rest of his class making posters to advertise the event.”

A group called Mums of Melksham held an auction of men in the Assembly Rooms. Sheila Ward said: “I decided to get involved after seeing mothers and children separated because of the tsunami. It must be horrendous and I can’t bear to think what it would be like to rebuild your life without your children”.

I was particularly touched to read about the children at St Michael’s school who raised money for the appeal by decorating and selling heart-shaped biscuits. The interesting thing about this was that the children were encouraged to undertake this task quietly with soothing music and to meditate upon the suffering of those whose lives were devastated by the tsunami. Headteacher Beverley Martin said: “We wanted the children to think about what it would be like to have no clean water, no food, nowhere to live, no clothes and, most importantly, no family left.”

Some NGOs expressed frustration with bureaucratic procedures but the government said that new houses must be built to good standards. There was resentment against the arrogance of some foreign NGOs, who were seen as having an agenda which might not put Sri Lankans’ needs first.

Recovery

When we travelled to Galle via Hambantota four years after the tsunami there was a wide new bypass allowing travelers to avoid the town centre. Along the sides of the highway were neat little housing developments reminiscent of suburban homes in the west.

However, the reconstruction effort did not always go to plan. Hungama, was a new housing project undertaken just months after the tsunami with public donations from Hungary.  Even the homeless refused to move in as the units were so badly built. Some units were turned into government servants’ quarters, while others have only been occupied after survivors undertook extensive repairs with their own funds.

Even today, there are complaints. A woman called Nandani told the Colombo Sunday Times recently: “The new houses weren’t up to standard. I told them, last time we were saved because we ran from the tsunami. Now, if one comes, we’ll die from the house falling on us.” At the China friendship tsunami village in Kurunduwatta, Galle, houses are derelict, and some have been abandoned. Kumudini Vidanage, a 55-year-old resident told the Sunday Times: “We got this house after we lost our home.” The house they were given began falling apart a year after moving in. “We are not people who should be living in this state, and we had to build from scratch because our leaders at the time stole from us.”

Many survivors claim that tsunami awareness and evacuation drills have largely ceased since 2007.  Lal Wickramaratne was a fisherman when the tsunami hit and now manages a museum at Peraliya, the location of the world’s single largest rail disaster, the Queen of the Sea train tsunami crash, which claimed over 1000 lives. Mr Wickramaratne says today: “It is unforgivable that the government cannot even maintain a tsunami warning tower after everything we lost that day.” He claimed that out of the 77 towers that were constructed across the country, over 50 do not work.

This is another issue for the new broom government to look at.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

ALSO NOTE

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Sri_Lanka_tsunami_train_wreck#:~:text=26%20December%202004.-,Tsunami%20strikes%