Tsunami & After

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Murali's 20-minute escape

      Galle (Sri Lanka): Sri Lankan off spinner Muttiah Muralitharan is "lucky to be alive" after narrowly missing one of the Tsunamis that have claimed over 24,000 lives and devastated large areas of South East Asia. Muralitharan, recovering from shoulder surgery in Sri Lanka while his teammates tour New Zealand, was in this southern coastal city over the weekend, handing out cricket bats to underprivileged children with his manager Kushil Gunasekera. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, 20 minutes after Muralitharan drove out of the city, Galle was all but wiped out by the Tsunamis. Triggered by the fifth-largest earthquake in 100 years, tidal waves tore across the Bay of Bengal and slammed into Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, Thailand, the Maldives, Malaysia and the Andaman Islands. The death toll in Sri Lanka is already above 12,000 and is expected to rise over the next few days. Thousands more are injured and have been left homeless.

    "I missed the wave by 20 minutes," Muralitharan told the paper on Monday night. "I had only just left Galle so I am very lucky to be alive. The wave was over 20 feet high and it went two kilometres inland. A lot of our cricketers are from there and we don't know how their families are. My manager barely survived. His house is gone. Galle is totally under water and a lot of people are missing or dead. There are people everywhere screaming." While Muralitharan frantically phoned friends and family from his Colombo home, his Sri Lanka teammates were forced to do so from New Zealand, where Wednesday's one-day international has been postponed and the remainder of the tour is expected to be rescheduled. Team manager Brendan Kuruppu, speaking yesterday in Napier, said: "One player's relative has lost his life and so many others have no contact with their relatives. It is a very sad situation."

    Muralitharan said it would be difficult for him to join his teammates ahead of the first Test against New Zealand in Hamilton, which had been scheduled for January 15, given the extent of devastation in his homeland. "Something like this has never happened to my country. In my opinion, it is not the right time for cricket. I was seeing on the TV today some of the people who are alive in Galle, and there is a lot of organising to do, a lot of feeding people. A lot of our cricketers are from that area," Murali said. "Galle is under water and so is Jaffna. I am not sure what happened to the people I was with in Galle. I had just been there giving poor children some bats. I had finished doing that and was driving out of Galle when this happened. There was no warning. It is a very, very bad situation," he added.
-Dec 28, 2004

Tourists begin leaving Sri Lanka (Go To Top)

     Colombo: Tourists have started checking out of the hotels situated along the coastal areas in Sri Lanka after Tsunami wrecked havoc in the Island nation on the morning after Christmas. In the seaside town of Kalutara, holidaymakers staying at a luxury hotel on the seafront described a 8 metre wall of water crashing onto the coast. As a result, many hotels along the southern coastal belt - jam-packed at the height of a bumper tourist season - were flooded. Railway tracks were broken, buildings demolished and vehicles tossed around like plastic toys as the floodwaters surged.

    Meanwhile, lakhs of Sri Lankans took shelter in temples and schools on Monday as the death toll rose to around 5000 and was likely to increase. In the southern coastal town of Galle, a major industrial hub submerged by a 9-metre wave, some residents spent the night on the roofs of office buildings and the local bus station. One of the tourists said: "We were pushed against the wall. We tried to open the door, we could not really. But, eventually we managed to open the door. Then the flow just dragged us into a corridor, it was a very, very small narrow corridor and the water level was going up, up, up and basically we were carried away within the flow and we had no way of breathing and the only way was from the ceiling and we were carried away. We managed to escape I don't know how. God knows." According to government estimates, more than 800,000 people have been left homeless. The final death toll could rise much higher because hundreds of people washed out to sea have not yet been accounted for.
- Dec 27, 2004

Fishermen rescue tourists from Vivekananda Rock (Go To Top)

     Kanyakumari: A group of fishermen has helped to save the lives of over 500 people at the Vivekananda Rock Memorial. Undeterred by the high tides, fishermen put their boats out into the sea and went to rescue the stranded tourists after the deadly Tsunami waves hit India's southeast coast on Sunday. The fishermen made a number of trips to the rock memorial to bring the stranded tourists to safety. "We just could not watch people helplessly waving at us from the rock memorial for help. We took the initiative first and police and others came after that," said Lenin, a local fisherman. "Initially nobody was there from the administration. So we did not care for our lives and just plunged into the sea to save them," said Praveen, a local fisherman. The fishermen scored over the IAF helicopter, which was called to airlift the stranded people, made several sorties to the rock memorial but could not land there. The helicopters were only able to drop food and water packets. It was then that the local fishermen swung into action and virtually took over the rescue operations and completed it successfully. It was because of the daring act of the fishermen that these people were brought to the shore safely. "We are alive today because of the help of local people. The fishermen and boat operators came and saved us," said Sanjay Garde, a tourist from Pune. The administration has also acknowledged the role played by the local fishermen. "More than 100 fishermen in Kanyakumari helped me and we all worked together," said Mohan Shanker, DIG, Tirunelveli Range.
- Dec 27, 2004

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