Things I didn't know about the Sri Lanka Tsunami

Those of you who have been paying close attention to my blog may have noticed that I haven't written that much about the Indian Ocean Tsunami. Though the programme that brought me here is for Tsunami-related projects, I felt that there was so much that had already been said about the events of Boxing Day 2004, and it was probably best not to dwell on disaster.

However, some things I have heard since I've been here have really surprised me, and challenged what I thought I knew about that day, so in this post I recount some of the things I have learnt:


1. The damage depended a lot on local geography. Even within Tangalla, there was a huge variation in the destruction depending on the local landscape. The beach nearest us (ten minutes walk) was completely inundated, damaging hotels, guest houses and residences. However, because of a steep bank, the water did not hit houses just 20m from the beach. On the other side of Tangalla, the flat landscape meant the water travelled a long distance inland, damaging houses and farmland 100 metres from the beach.

2. While we were watching events unfold on television from thousands of miles away in the UK, people here had no idea what was happening. The phones and electricity went down when the wave hit so people could not watch the news or contact loved ones. The coastal roads were damaged or blocked so it was very difficult to travel to help friends or family. Very few people actually saw the Tsunami waves, and survived to recount what they saw. Most only saw the destruction some time afterwards. A local friend commented that their first visual impression was the unexplained black mud all over the beachside area.

3. I now know some of the noble things people did in the immediate aftermath. Our host family took in friends and family and supplied neighbours with food and clean water. One family member travelled in to Galle to help his fiancee, who was still stuck on the roof of her college when he waded through the water to get her. Ex-pat residents and foreign donors did an enormous amount to help the local community, including building and equipping an excellent new hospital in Tangalla, constructing a special school near Dickwella, and supplying the fishing community with new boats and equipment.

Fishing boats in Hambantota harbour on Sri Lanka's south coast. The fishing industry has largely recovered, partly as a result of assistance from foreign donors.














4. In the years since 2004, a mind-boggling amount of foreign money has flowed into the affected area. This caused a major shock to the local economy in Tangalla, some positive, some negative. As happens in any such situation, certain people were better at securing help than others who perhaps had greater needs. People talk about the "golden wave" that came after the Tsunami, which some people took advantage of to enrich themselves at the expense of more needy people.

5. Much more deadly things have happened in Sri Lanka without foreigners really hearing about it. The civil war in the North and uprisings in the South of Sri Lanka have led to the deaths or displacement of hundreds of thousands of people in the last 25 years.

6. The 2004 tsunami was a very rare event. It sounds obvious, but before I came I was a little afraid that great waves were a regular occurrence in Sri Lanka and there might be another one while we were here. However, the earthquake that caused the 2004 tsunami was one of the largest since records began. Sri Lanka is not in an earthquake zone and coastal communities worldwide are also vulnerable to such a disaster.


So, these are just some of the things that I have learnt and that have surprised me about the Tsunami of 2004 - perhaps they will be surprising to people back home too.

A broken fishing boat still stands on the Palikuduwa beach near our house in Tangalla as a reminder of the Tsunami. In the main, the restaurants have now been rebuilt and the greenery has grown back, but the stories remain a powerful part of the local culture.