The Black Sunday

The Black Sunday

It was a peaceful Sunday and the streets wore a tired look after the just concluded Christmas celebrations. As the sun rose slowly spreading its rays of joy, the people too woke up to welcome the day with a bright smile-as mile never to come back to their faces.
December 26, 2004 will forever remain etched in the world’s collective consciousness as massive ocean waves triggered by an undersea earthquake off the coast of Sumatra ravaged almost half a dozen of the littoral countries of the Indian Ocean. Nature’s ferocity in the form of Tsunami, which returned to devastate after a gap of around 60 years, plunged the whole region in shock and grief. It has brought the world to a screeching halt to take cognizance of the fact that nothing is predictable.
The earthquake, which recorded a whopping 8.9 on the Richter scale-the fifth largest since the beginning of the 21st century-was a foretaste of things to come. Within minutes, the earthquake unleashed a devastating Tsunami as high as 6 meters, which first hit the coasts of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Maldives. These spreading walls of water took more than one hour to reach India and Sri Lanka to wreak havoc across the coastal areas of this region, cutting a swathe of destruction and death. The Tsunami though a rare phenomenon in the South Asian region set everybody pondering over its occurrence.
Tsunami, a Japanese word meaning harbor wave, is a silent wave generated when the sea floor is ruptured by seismic action thereby displacing the overlying water in the ocean. These waves cannot be felt aboard ships nor can they be seen from the air in the open ocean. But as the Tsunami approaches the coastal waters, the long waves pile on one another thereby attaining a mammoth size, which lashes the shore devouring the entire region.
The calamitous effect of such an unprecedented catastrophe is unimaginable. The victims of this tragedy were mostly poor people, on account of the proximity of their houses to the sea. People taking a stroll on the beaches, vendors gearing themselves for a busy ahead, fisher folk just back from their fishing ventures, tourists rejuvenating themselves in the cool fresh air of a Sunday morning and trying to feel the tickle of water on their feet, children taking positions on their regular playground… they were all swept away by these gigantic waves which turned the whole place into a ghost town. And what remained was debris of bodies lying strewn in an undignified manner, destroyed catamarans and fishing vessels. Cars and motorbikes lifted by the waves lay mangled. Where once stood fragile huts and sturdy buildings dotting the beach, today one can see nothing but a wasteland.
No sooner had the news of the cataclysm come out than the government was quick in reacting to the situation by ordering the state governments and other officials to roll up their sleeves and start the relief operations. But for those who lost their rays of hope, it will take more than relief measures to expunge the memories of that black day.

Article by: S. Gopika Gopakumar,St.Teresa’s College