December 26 is called Boxing Day. The Tsunami that occurred on a Boxing Day exactly 15 years ago destroyed 230,000 lives of all nationalities and religions, proving that nature does not distinguish or discriminate. It left millions widowed, orphaned, or distressed of their loved ones. Giant tidal waves lashed 3/4th of the island’s shoreline plunging into a crisis of exceptional nature. With a sense of shock and dismay that we learned by 9.30 am on that morning of December 2004, that a gigantic earthquake had occurred a couple of hours before close to Sumatra. Earthquakes are measured on the Richter scale.
The average strength of earthquakes we had heard up to this point was between 4.5 to 7.5 on the Richter scale. However, the Boxing day Sumatra earthquake measured 9.4. By any standards, this was certainly an enormous quake.
December 26, 2004, Sunday was both the Buddhist full moon day and the Boxing day (Christmas) holiday weekend. Tsunami-rail disaster 2004, occurred when a crowded passenger train was destroyed on the coastal railway line in Sri Lanka by the tsunami which followed the earthquake. The tsunami caused over 31,000 deaths and billions of rupees in property destroyed in the island. It covered 3/4th of the island’s coastal areas.
Ceylon Observer of January 4, 1907, carried a news item …
“Strange Tidal Effect at Galle”- ‘The Sea Recedes 50 Feet’--Fish and lobsters stranded—Galle, Jan. 4, 4.38 pm….. ‘The sea in harbour first receded at 1.30 in the afternoon some 35 to 50 feet. The whole coast round the harbour is dry for the same distance. Fish and lobsters were caught by coolies and others. The sea receded again several times at intervals of half an hour or so….the incoming swell has a strong current. There is very high water at the jetty. …The lighters landing rice from “Loodiana” are in danger. Some boats narrowly escaped being wrecked on the rocks. ….’
Katukurunda train accident in 1928
‘Village Life in the Forties: Memories of a Lankan Expatriate’, Shelton A. Gunaratne (Arcadius) says, ‘…hirigal thattaya nicknamed because he was bald-headed had an alias Mullewatte Mudalali who had allegedly become rich by pilfering from the bodies of those who died in the Katukurunda train accident –page 64. Katukurunda accident that happened on March 12, 1928, is significant for two reasons; first head-on train collision and the train accident with the highest death toll up to 2004. It happened when two passenger trains powered by steam engines travelling on opposite directions on a single line track collided head-on between Kalutara South and Katukurunda killing 28 including the staff and passengers.
Tsunami at Peraliya
Train no, 591 was a normal train operating between Maradana and Galle that left Colombo's Fort Station shortly after 6.50 a.m. with over 1,000 passengers, and a few more hundreds entrained on the way. At Peraliya, Telwatta, the train stopped for signals; it was only about 200 metres inland from the beach. Locomotive Manitoba, a class M2a --model G12, built in 1956 pulled the train.
The Pallekele seismic monitoring institution’s instruments registered the 9.5 quake within minutes but they did not consider it would cause a tsunami of such magnitude to reach us. All efforts to notify about it failed because no one was there to answer the call, they confessed.
At 9.34 am in Peraliya, passengers saw the first gigantic wave that was thrown up by the quake. Water surged around it. Hundreds of villages, thinking the train to be the safest, climbed onto the carriages to avoid being brushed away. Some even stood behind it, hoping it would protect them from the approaching waters. The first, however, flooded the compartments and caused terror amongst the passengers. Within the next ten minutes a huge wave pushed the train up and smashed it against the coconut trees and buildings which lined the rail track, devastating those inside as well as who sought shelter behind it.
The eight huge cars were packed with passengers and villages. The doors could not be unlocked while the compartments got filled with sea water, drowning most of them under the water that splashed over the wreckage many times, and many were crushed by debris. Locomotive staff, Janaka Fernando, engineer and Sivaloganathan, his assistant died at their posts. The tsunami waters rose 8 to 9 metres above ground level and 2 to 3 metres above the top of the train for a few minutes.
Immediate rescue was not possible due to the enormous nature of the disaster, and the local rescuers were unable to cope with the destruction. The authorities had no idea of the location where the train was for a few hours. It was finally spotted by a forces helicopter around 2.00 p.m.
Hundreds of people with broken limbs and severe injuries died before they could be taken to a hospital. Many bodies were not retrieved for several days. Members of victim’s families moved down to find their relatives themselves. A forensic team fingerprinted and photographed the unclaimed bodies at the site as well as at Batapola Hospital so that the records could be saved for future identification after the bodies were buried.
The sub-urban town of Telwatte/Peraliya suffered extensive damage. More than 200 of the unidentified bodies retrieved were buried three days later in a mass grave. Engine 591 Manitoba and two damaged carriages were repaired, rebuilt and were returned to Peraliya four years later on December 26, 2008, to the exact place where a memorial was built to remember those who lost their lives.
The huge waves travelling at over 800 Kms per hour destroyed the entire coastal belts of Sumatra, of Nicobar Islands, Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, which forced in a westerly course because of land obstructions on the eastward end. It badly affected the Province of Aceh, Indonesia where it was estimated 120,000 perished. Originally generated by the movement of the sea-bed near Sumatra, the Tsunami waves took a little over two hours to reach the island of Sri Lanka, travelling from its epicenter in Sumatra along the ocean. The wave generation clearly lay within the earthquake belts.
World train disasters
The second highest number of lives lost in train disasters was recorded in 1981 in Bihar, India that killed 800 when a cyclone blew a train into a river. More than 380 were killed in a gas explosion in a train in Ufa, Russia in June 1989. In August 1995, 310 were killed in a train collision in Uttar Pradesh, India. 315 were killed in a fire on train travelling to Cairo in February 2002. In February 2004 in Neyshabur, Iran - at least 300 were killed when a runaway train exploded. More than 200 killed when a passenger train and a goods train collided in Dodoma region, Tanzania in June 2002.
Viharamaha Devi and Tsunami?
Two millennia ago, Viharamaha Devi, the only daughter of King Kelanitissa volunteered to sacrifice her life, for the sake of her countrymen.
Kelanitissa punished a monk by boiling him in an oil caldron. As the story unfolds…, Gods, infuriated over this brutal act, made huge waves of the sea rush inland causing destruction. A well-defined ‘plot’ by smart story tellers made people laugh, (not meant to be taken seriously) was ‘Tsunami’ the Japanese term meaning ‘harbour wave’ which was hence unfamiliar to Sri Lankans. The Hawaiian Tsunami Monitoring made contact with a senior minister in the early hours of Sunday, December 26, 2004. The message read, “There was a tsunami coming from Indonesia in two hrs”. The minister lost no time, unlike on 21/4 Easter Sunday, acted promptly, and ordered a delegation to Katunayake Airport with a paging board, “Welcome--Mr. Tsunami of Indonesia.”
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