Sunday, December 26, 2004

Water World

It was my mom who first felt the tremors
She was getting her morning coffee and paper in the hall when the picture on top of the TV began to shake
She ran into the bedroom and dragged me and my sis out of the house
We bonded with our neighbours for about half an hour before judging it safe to go back inside
Turns out there was an earthquake measuring 6.6 to 8 8.9 on the richter scale in sumatra
A tidal wave hit sri lanka
and then water breached the coast in several parts of chennai. beach resorts, beach houses, ecr, tiruvanmiyur, besant nagar are all flooded. Sea water has come in by about 3 - 4 kilometres.
Water is neck high in Santhome and parts of Mandaveli.
Telephone networks are still working. And Sun TV (in the absence of any ACTUAL footage or news) is drawing patterns of major earthquakes occuring on the 26th of a month with surprising regularity..
In any given month, there is a 0.033 chance that earthquakes will happen on the 26th :)

(.. later updates ..)

as the news pours in, we've all been glued to the telly from the morning.
And casulaties.. from 500 - 1000 in India. atleast 300 in coastal tamil nadu. It's shocking, unbelievable and hard to digest.
We all deal with tragedies in different ways. Some of us live on the phone sharing information.. trying to come to terms with 15 metre high waves. Other obsessviely change channels trying to learn what happened. The gruesome scenes on news channel are hardly any comfort.

The tamil nadu coast guard has FINALLY swung into action.. where were they for so long.. it may be too little too late.. (hope not)

Most of the people who lost their lives were fisherfolk.. or simply everyday chennaiites who were out for a sunday morning stroll or game of cricket.
May their souls rest in peace

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