Five Years After The Tsunami Waters Receded

By R. Wijewardene

December 26, 2004 — the date of the year’s Uduvap poya began like any other holiday. At dawn temple chants began to float over idyllic rural scenes. People unhurriedly went about their morning’s business. Fishermen refrained from casting their nets and the most determined of the winter season’s tourists struggled out of bed to have long swathes of golden beach to themselves. The Indian ocean, looking its best on what promised to be a clear day, sparkled a thousand shades of blue.

Until 9.20 it seemed like just another day in this tropical paradise.

And no one could have imagined the horror the following hours would bring. There was virtually no warning.

At some points on the coast the sea suddenly receded as water pulled back from the coast exposing kilometers of what is usually sea bed. But far from serving as a warning the miles of exposed sands and stranded silver fish became a curiosity and people ran onto what had been the ocean floor to gather coral, shells and fish .

This simple curiosity in the face of imminent disaster might seem naïve but nothing in their experience could have possibly prepared the people of the island’s coasts for what was about to happen.

There is no word in the vernacular for a tsunami, nothing like it had ever happened before.

Sea came rushing back

So when minutes later the sea came rushing back, filling the space it had vacated with a vengeance and then surging beyond the former shore line and advancing as a solid wall deep inland, the reaction of those caught up in the disaster was not panic but blank terror.

The sea was trying to swallow the island; it appeared that nothing less than the end of the world had come. Water rushed over beaches shattering reefs, smashing headlands, uprooting trees and turning such trivialities as houses and hotels to dust.

Amidst the varied detritus of the disaster; floating masonry, bobbing branches, and drifting vehicles, were thousands of people. Over a 100,000 people found themselves caught in the midst of a surging ocean. Those who could comprehend what was happening made desperate efforts to cling to floating debris or clambered onto the few remaining roofs and trees, to avoid being sucked under.

All too often however these struggles were in vain and in minutes over 30,000 lives were literally washed away. An equal number are still missing.

Mass graves

The bodies of the dead lay so thick on the country’s beaches that for the first time in living memory mass graves were the only solution to the problem of the dead.
Nothing, not even the civil war, had ever wreaked such enormous suffering and such utter devastation in such a short space of time.

As waters receded and communication was restored it became apparent the tsunami had swept over two thirds of the county’s coastlines. No disaster on record has had an effect that was even remotely comparable. Along with structures; houses, hotels, hospitals and schools, whole communities were washed away. Cities as large as Galle and Matara were briefly submerged and towns as large as Hambantota were washed into the sea. Insulated far up the west coast even Colombo suffered some casualties as the water swept away sea side shanties.

Fortunately the east’s major towns, though devastated, were spared the full brunt of the enormous waves. Trincomalee was sheltered by its harbour and Batticaloa was saved by its lagoon, but further north Mullaitivu almost ceased to exist and the scale of death on the north east coast may never be known.

In a region already devastated by civil war the tsunami added in a moment a layer of death as thick as that already left by 30 years of conflict. More burial sites to add to the already vast grave yards and abundant memorials. But death was only one of the horrors unleashed by the tsunami.

Mothers left with neither their husbands or children; husbands without wives; children without parents. Sometimes just a single survivor from an entire extended family was left to somehow rebuild a shattered life. Orphans, widows, invalids and the newly homeless.

Complete devastation

The devastation in many cases was so complete, with every trace of former homes and villages erased, that for many of those effected the very possibility of beginning new lives seemed remote.

Hastily enacted safety laws forbidding construction within 100 meters of the sea prevented many of those who did survive from retuning to their original homes. While many of the displaced were promised new land further inland the distribution of new homes took years to complete, and in some cases is still ongoing, leaving thousands of people trapped in the limbo of IDP camps.

Formerly productive members of society consigned to unproductive years in sweltering camps, reliving in their idleness the events of that December morning.

The horror of that day; the stench of death, the images of the commuter train that became a coffin for over 2000 people, the hulking ruins where hotels had been, the wailing mothers and worse the silent children will for generations be indelibly etched into the consciousness of every Sri Lankan.

In the days after the disaster the diverse people of the island displayed an extraordinary solidarity. Assistance flowed from south to north and west to east without any thought of ethnicity or religion. Thousands volunteered to help; clearing rubble, cleaning beaches, donating food and clothing. And this local enthusiasm combined with a vast amount of international aid from every part of the world, meant that just days after the tsunami struck programmes for the redevelopment and rehabilitation of tsunami affected areas had already begun.

While the task was enormous the generous outpouring of international good will and the resilience that years of instability have ingrained into every Sri Lankan allowed the country to rebuild and recover within a remarkably short space of time.

The good will between the government and rebels would break down just months after the tsunami. However the fundamental perseverance of the communities decimated by the disaster was such that regardless of broader political difficulties they were, when finally allowed to leave IDP camps, able to return a semblance of normality to their lives. Today after five years of perseverance, millions of dollars of aid, the assistance of dozens of NGOs, thousands of volunteers and crucially after the enormous effort made by those directly affected by the disaster the island seems to have recovered.

The beach at Unawatuna is narrower but once again filled with tourists and crowded with guest houses. In the resorts and resort towns of the west coast business now proceeds as usual. Galle and Matara are thriving once again, while enormous development projects are transforming Hambantota. Trains once again ply the busy route down south.

The camps for the displaced have finally disappeared replaced by huge post tsunami housing schemes. Where nature was devastated trees have taken route and eroded beaches have gradually returned. Perhaps the most telling sign of recovery is that children once gain play freely in the ocean. In the months and years after the disaster those who had seen the ocean carry away their families, people who formerly depended on the sea, developed a fear of the endless watery expanse that surrounds this island.

Anyone who witnessed the utter devastation on the south and east coasts in the days following the tsunami could not have imagined such a complete recovery would ever be possible. Yet for all the outward normalcy the rebuilt homes and schools, the bobbing fishing boats, the splashing children, for hundreds of thousands of people who lost family in the disaster the trauma will never fade and the moments after December 26 will affect them for a life time.

Five years on from the greatest disaster in the island’s history we can reflect on the tremendous progress the island has made.

But in the revelry that surrounds the festive season those who have the time for indulgence should also reflect on the thousands for whom the end of the year isn’t a time for celebration but for memorial.

The desperate need of the days after the tsunami maybe gone but despite appearances the recovery is far from complete. Thousands still struggle with pain and isolation imposed on them by an unfamiliar word — tsunami, and as long as there are people who remember the day the sea swallowed the land, that need for support, caring and concern will remain.