Tsunamis in southern India, a week later...
Ah... the first day of the new year. And my resolution is to blog more regularly. Let's see if that happens.
I stayed home yesterday while fireworks went off. My intention was to get some work done, but of course very little work got done. Still, I happened to be on the net when my parents suddenly turned up, so we talked a while.
My folks live in southern India, about twenty five miles from its southern tip at Kanyakumari, but were unaffected by the tsunami. About three hundred people died at KK beach itself, and a thousand in the province as a whole. Thousands lost their homes. The tsunami struck on a Sunday, when Christian fishermen (a sizeable fraction in this part of India) stayed at home for religious reasons. I don't know if that meant they died with their families (i.e. how close their homes were to the sea) or not. A cousin told me she knew of some Muslim fishermen who had worked that day - rather, who worked that night and then went to nearby inland areas to sell their fish, then rushed back to their homes when the tsunami hit, only to find that their families had been killed.
Surveying the Tamil Nadu coast, Jan 1 2005
Local inlanders have been taking collections for those affected, with little (hopefully) attention to religious boundaries.
As happened in several other places, the sea drew back several hundred meters before the tsunami waves (of which eye-witnesses reported more than one) struck, causing many people to venture into to the sea out of curiosity. This reaction from people was also common, except among those few communities around the Indian Ocean whose oral traditions gave advice on what to do if that ever happened.
Sea gypsies' knowledge saves Thai village: "The elders told us that if the water recedes fast it will reappear in the same quantity in which it disappeared," [said] 65-year-old village chief Sarmao Kathalay...
Anyway, a photograph of the temporary new coast was printed in a local Tamil magazine; my parents didn't know how it was taken, though my dad suggested that it might have been from some cliffs near the coast.
KK beach is a popular tourist resort, and one of the attractions is the Vivekananda Rock Memorial. This is an island just off the shore, with a building and tall walls. Several hundred tourists were on stranded on it when the disaster hit, and were there for several hours sans food and water (though a helicopter dropped some packets later) as the boats that had ferried them to the rock were washed away and local fishermen were understandably too terrified to take them to shore afterwards. (It's not like many local fishermen had boats available in any case.) One story is that the first boat to help out was used by a cop (from out of town?), after which surviving fishermen also helped out. Other reports have the fishermen helping out first. The actual truth is irrelevant, the fact is that the tourists were ferried back to the mainland, mostly by locals who had lost a lot more than the tourists had.
Incidentally, one tourist was a Indian Supreme Court judge.
Rediff.com's Tsunami coverage
Amit Varma has a very well-written piece on several topics, including relief organizations donating too many used clothes that few affected people want to wear, and a very interesting interview with a local official who seems to know what he's doing... "When the disaster occurred, we set up community kitchens and fed them, but we encouraged the affected people to go back to their homes and cook. They did just that. We don't just want to take care of their short-term needs. We need to give them their livelihoods back." The local official had even conducted disaster management courses two months before December 26. Check out India Uncut, Amit's blog, for more information.
I stayed home yesterday while fireworks went off. My intention was to get some work done, but of course very little work got done. Still, I happened to be on the net when my parents suddenly turned up, so we talked a while.
My folks live in southern India, about twenty five miles from its southern tip at Kanyakumari, but were unaffected by the tsunami. About three hundred people died at KK beach itself, and a thousand in the province as a whole. Thousands lost their homes. The tsunami struck on a Sunday, when Christian fishermen (a sizeable fraction in this part of India) stayed at home for religious reasons. I don't know if that meant they died with their families (i.e. how close their homes were to the sea) or not. A cousin told me she knew of some Muslim fishermen who had worked that day - rather, who worked that night and then went to nearby inland areas to sell their fish, then rushed back to their homes when the tsunami hit, only to find that their families had been killed.
Surveying the Tamil Nadu coast, Jan 1 2005
Local inlanders have been taking collections for those affected, with little (hopefully) attention to religious boundaries.
As happened in several other places, the sea drew back several hundred meters before the tsunami waves (of which eye-witnesses reported more than one) struck, causing many people to venture into to the sea out of curiosity. This reaction from people was also common, except among those few communities around the Indian Ocean whose oral traditions gave advice on what to do if that ever happened.
Sea gypsies' knowledge saves Thai village: "The elders told us that if the water recedes fast it will reappear in the same quantity in which it disappeared," [said] 65-year-old village chief Sarmao Kathalay...
Anyway, a photograph of the temporary new coast was printed in a local Tamil magazine; my parents didn't know how it was taken, though my dad suggested that it might have been from some cliffs near the coast.
KK beach is a popular tourist resort, and one of the attractions is the Vivekananda Rock Memorial. This is an island just off the shore, with a building and tall walls. Several hundred tourists were on stranded on it when the disaster hit, and were there for several hours sans food and water (though a helicopter dropped some packets later) as the boats that had ferried them to the rock were washed away and local fishermen were understandably too terrified to take them to shore afterwards. (It's not like many local fishermen had boats available in any case.) One story is that the first boat to help out was used by a cop (from out of town?), after which surviving fishermen also helped out. Other reports have the fishermen helping out first. The actual truth is irrelevant, the fact is that the tourists were ferried back to the mainland, mostly by locals who had lost a lot more than the tourists had.
Incidentally, one tourist was a Indian Supreme Court judge.
Rediff.com's Tsunami coverage
Amit Varma has a very well-written piece on several topics, including relief organizations donating too many used clothes that few affected people want to wear, and a very interesting interview with a local official who seems to know what he's doing... "When the disaster occurred, we set up community kitchens and fed them, but we encouraged the affected people to go back to their homes and cook. They did just that. We don't just want to take care of their short-term needs. We need to give them their livelihoods back." The local official had even conducted disaster management courses two months before December 26. Check out India Uncut, Amit's blog, for more information.
posted by Dinoj | 10:34
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