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Tidal wave kills over 6000 in North East; 2000 feared dead in the Jaffna peninsula

• Over 4000 submerged with the surge
• Nearly 2000 reported missing
• Hundreds of villages completely swept away without trace
• Hundreds of thousands made homeless
• Thousands injured
• Inestimable destruction of property and infrastructure

The entire coastal belt in the North East was hit by an unprecedented tidal surge in the morning hours yesterday 26 December 2004. Reports from the areas of disaster indicate that the worst hit, are the coastal towns and villages in Mullaittivu and Thalayadi – Chempianpattu in Vadamaradchy East, Vettilaikkerny, Kaddaikkadu, Maththalan, Kallappadu, Vannankerny, Sinntaththankadu and Alampil are among the villages that bore the worst brunt of the disaster. No precautionary measure could have saved the people and their dwellings from this disaster, for all happened within a couple of minutes.

Emergency rescue teams comprising LTTE members, Civilian Based Organisations, Local NGO’s and the TRO task force are actively engaged in recovering the bodies that are washed ashore after the ferocity of the tidal wave receded. Already 600 bodies have been recovered in Mullaittivu and brought to Mulliyawalai for identification by surviving relatives. Kilinochchi District Hospital received 120 bodies recovered from the Thalayadi coast. More than 900 injured were treated at the Kilinochchi hospital. Since the ward space is very much limited, only the most seriously injured are kept in the hospital and others are accommodated in school buildings and attended to by the LTTE Medical teams. About 100 bodies were recovered in the Chundikulam coast and brought to St.Theresa school in Kilinochchi for identification. Political Division of the LTTE, mobilised for rescue operations, assisted the surviving relatives to remove the remains of their kith and kin for cremation.

In the Jaffna peninsula, hospitals in Jaffna, Point Pedro and Chavakachcheri were seen crowded with injured and surviving relatives of the dead whose bodies have all been brought to the hospitals by the rescue teams. In Point Pedro the loss of lives and devastation was mostly confined to sea coast villages lying adjacent to the sea. The coastal town of Valvettiturai and its suburbs are also reported to have suffered heavily. The surge affected parts of Karainagar, where visitors who were in the Casuarina beach are reported swept away. Though loss of lives is not reported from the islands of Nainativu, Analaitivu and Delft, buildings are reported damaged.

Sri Lankan military personnel who manned the watch towers along the sea coast were also swept away with the sentry post structures and hundreds are said to be missing. A group of SLA soldiers who were engaged in their regular practice in the sea coast village of Nagarkovil are said to have been completely swept away. Fifty bodies of SLA soldiers recovered along the North coast from Nagarkovil to Point Pedro have been delivered to the Palaly military complex in the High Security Zone. SLA military officials and administrators housed in vulnerable spots within the HSZ have been shifted to school buildings in Tellippallai. LTTE political division in Jaffna is spearheading the rescue and relief operations with the help of local volunteers, religious organisations and CBO’s.

The impact of the devastation is very badly felt in Mullaittivu and Thalayadi, east of Point Pedro not only because of the magnitude of devastation but these areas which were under military occupation completely devoid of civilian population for more than a decade and freed only in 1996. What was freed then were towns completely denuded of the infrastructure. It is the resilience of the people, more than any developmental inputs, that brought the towns back to a semblance of normalcy. The population that worked so hard to rebuild their homesteads with help from TRO and the Tamil diaspora is back again in ‘square one’, many of them having lost their kith and kin and the meagre belongings, all being swept away in a matter of minutes.

From the reports of rescue teams in the affected regions, it is learnt that the process of identifying the recovered bodies, estimating the number missing have all become so hazardous in view of many families completely swept away and some families having only one or two survivors. There are small children who have lost all the elders and parents having lost all their children. A sizeable population consisted of internally displaced people, which too make identifying difficult for local survivors. Aid workers are primarily engaged in retrieving the bodies washed ashore and got entangled in the debris of the buildings devastated. A parallel process is on to arrive at final figures pertaining to the actual number of dead and missing and once completed, the aid teams say, the information would be published in the media.

Transport, medical, shelter and ‘what next’ are the serious problems that this dazed population faces today. They look forward to the International Community and the INGO’s with inputs from the Donor nations to help them first to manage the present and later to rebuild their life.

27 December 2004

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