MADRAS/TRIVANDRUM, 27 December 2004 — Wailing relatives gathered around dozens of bodies on beaches in southern India yesterday after a tsunami triggered by an earthquake in distant Indonesia killed thousands.
Television footage showed bodies, including young girls, being tossed into lorries in Madras, capital of Tamil Nadu state.
Vast swathes of land were submerged in one of India’s worst natural disasters in living memory as heavy waves and winds slammed Tamil Nadu and neighboring Andhra Pradesh, leaving thousands homeless and hundreds of fishermen missing.
A government official said at least 1,625 people had been killed in Tamil Nadu alone.
“It was early in the morning and I was sorting my catch from the fishing net when I saw the waves climbing alarmingly,” said Ravichandran, 32, a fisherman from Elliot’s Beach in Madras. “I rushed back and pulled my wife and two children out of our home, water had rushed into our hut by then.”
The tsunami that crashed into India and Sri Lanka and swamped tourist islands in Thailand and the Maldives was triggered by the world’s fifth-largest quake in a century, measuring 8.9 on the Richter scale.
Shanties on the coast of Madras, where 100 died, were submerged. Hundreds fled to higher ground with pots, pans and other meager possessions as water flooded the huts.
“I was taking a bath and before I realized what was happening, water had seeped into the bathroom,” said another fisherman, Pazhani. “I got so scared that I ran out.”
“I was having breakfast with my three children when water started coming into my home,” wailed his wife, Lakshmi. “We had to leave everything and run to safety. We don’t know what has happened to our TV, radio, utensils.”
Hours after the tsunami hit, bodies ringed by wailing relatives lay on beaches surrounded by half-submerged cars and wrecked boats.
In the ruins of a fishermen’s colony once 1,500 huts strong, household debris lay in the mud. Cooking utensils, fishing nets, broken televisions and slippers littered the ground.
“My mother had gone to the seaside to buy fish when the wave came and lifted her,” said a dazed Muthulakshmi, a fisherman’s wife, standing on a pavement with hundreds of refugees. “It took us an hour to recover her body. Thank God my husband had not gone to sea as he was unwell.”
People carried bodies in sacks to nearby hospitals where dozens of dead already lined the corridors.
“I felt like I was on a train. I turned around and I saw that a small glass table with a flower vase was shaking,” said Madras resident Rajani Unni, who felt the tremors in her apartment about 100 meters from Elliot’s Beach. “We saw people rushing away from fishermen’s colonies lining the beach. Women were wailing and crying.” In Andhra Pradesh, hundreds of fishermen were feared missing.
“Where are my mummy and daddy?” cried nine-year-old Bhuvaneswari, whose parents were swallowed by the sea at Manginapudi beach near Machilipatnam, about 350 kilometers from the state capital, Hyderabad.
A state official in Kerala, on the opposite side of the country to Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, said at least 100 people had been killed in the southwestern state.
Kerala’s Director General of Police (DGP) P. K. Hormis Tharakan said the toll could go up. Most of the deaths were reported from the central districts of Alleppey and Quilon.
Karunagappally in Quilon district was the worst hit. Some of the Christian pilgrims from Kerala visiting Velankanni in Tamil Nadu are also feared dead after they were trapped in the Church when water gushed in.
The DGP said hundreds of families have been shifted to rescue camps. A crisis management cell set up at the state secretariat was closely monitoring the situation, he said.
The government has announced 50,000 rupees for each bereaved family. India’s armed forces have been called in to help in rescue operations at home and in Sri Lanka.
Almost 500 tourists were stranded on a rock in the sea off India’s southernmost tip, witnesses said. Tourists take a ferry to the Vivekananda Rock memorial to see the sunrise, but services were halted soon after the tourists landed because of choppy seas, an official said. Water also entered India’s main space center at Sriharikota, an island off the south coast, but there were no reports of any damage, Prabhakar Reddy, a bureaucrat in Andhra Pradesh, said. Television reports said a nuclear power station in Tamil Nadu had been shut as a precaution but there were no details.
— With input from Syed Amin Jafri in Hyderabad
