PONDICHERRY/MADRAS, 28 December 2004 — Shrieks of grief filled the air in southern India yesterday as mourners bid farewell to victims of tidal waves that slammed into seaside villages across much of Asia.
“Mother, what’s happened? I saw you yesterday and now you’re here. You’re not dead, you’ve gone to another village. Please come back,” implored one woman at a mass grave in hard-hit Tamil Nadu state.
Survivors grimly buried or burned their dead as the death toll mounted with thousands more missing amid warnings of a return of the killer tsunami.
Groups gathered on beaches as dawn broke to light incense and pray for thousands of missing.
But while some held on to fading hope, others broke down as they discovered loved ones among the loads of dead ferried to hastily erected open-air morgues and authorities gouged out mass graves to bury bodies already rotting in the tropical heat.
Moderate aftershocks hit parts of India a day after one of Asia’s worst tsunamis in decades, triggered by an earthquake off Indonesia.
“Death came from the sea,” said Satya Kumari, a construction worker living on the outskirts of the former French enclave of Pondicherry on India’s east coast. “The waves just kept chasing us. It swept away all our huts. What did we do to deserve this?”
At a hospital in the town of Thazhanguda, a group of women already consoling the mother of one victim broke down when the body of the daughter of one of them was brought in.
“Anasuya, Anasuya. Talk to me, talk to me, it’s your mother,” one wailed, hugging the sand- and weed-covered body. The father, too, tried to speak, but broke down.
In nearby Cuddalore, back-hoes were used to dig mass graves. “We must have dug some seven or eight pits and buried 25, 30, 35 bodies in each of them,” said gravedigger Shekhar. “We lined up bodies next to each other in two rows and buried them. I’ve never buried so many in a single day in my life.”
Weather officials warned of more high waves over the next day or two and urged people to stay away from the shoreline. “Like a ripple, the tsunami will only die down gradually and so we expect more waves before they slowly subside,” said S. Sridharan, of the Meteorological Department’s office in Madras, capital of Tamil Nadu state, one of the worst hit areas.
Officials in Tamil Nadu reported more deaths yesterday. Rescue operations in some of the worst hit areas had only just begun.
About three-quarters of the dead were women and children, the families of poor fishermen, too weak to run or swim through the swirling waters.
“The men ran or held on to trees and walls for dear life,” said M. Rajani, a fisherman. “The women and children were no match for the sea.”
The government announced a special fund to help survivors and a 100,000-rupee ($2,280) payment to the relatives of the dead. Tens of thousands have also fled their homes.
Federal coalition chief Sonia Gandhi was headed for the Andaman and Nicobar islands and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was due to begin a two-day visit to devastated areas from today.
The government said the cost of damage would not be known for at least a week.
Relief workers say they face a daunting task because of the scale and spread of the disaster, which covers hundreds of kilometers of isolated coastline.
Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaran told reporters after a Cabinet meeting that contact had finally been made with one of the worst hit islands, Car Nicobar. The death toll was not known, he said, but the number would be “very large”.
Coast Guard officials said crews reported flying over hundreds of bodies off India’s east coast and said people were panic-stricken in parts of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, still experiencing aftershocks and intermittent rough seas.
Several aftershocks, one 6.0 on the Richter scale, hit the islands yesterday, but there were no reports of new damage.
Air force planes flew in food and medicine to the islands. The streets of the capital, Port Blair, were largely deserted and eerily silent, with no electricity.
Human bodies and buffalo carcasses could be seen as water levels receded along the coast. Hundreds of slum huts of mud and thatch lay in ruins amid household debris.
