Killer wave washes away over 3,000

Worried relatives of six-year-old Rahul, who had gone for a walk on the beach with his grandmother, were frantically looking for his body. The boy had been missing while his grandmother’s body was found at Stanley Medical College Hospital.

Of the 64 bodies brought to the Royapettah GH, 41 had been identified till late evening and handed over to relatives. Most of the bodies had deep wounds indicating that the victims had hit against hard rocks.

The massive tragedy once again brought into focus the lack of infrastructure in public hospitals to handle calamities of such a magnitude. Hospitals were overflowing with corpses which were lined up on the floor of the mortuaries. In the General Hospital, bodies were placed side by side in a narrow corridor and relatives had to jump over them as they tried to identify family members.

Even Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa had to walk alongside the bodies at the Royapettah hospital in the evening.

The staff at the mortuary of the hospital were struggling to keep pace with the steady stream of bodies pouring in and policemen had to be called in to assist the staff. Though the city police had to bring in ambulances from private hospitals and fire tenders, there was a dearth of vehicles.

But the compassion of the doctors, the paramedical staff and the police made up for the lack of infrastructure. Doctors and the hospital staff rose to the occasion, tagging, identifying and handing over bodies in quick time.

Met Department officials said the first aftershocks were recorded at 6.29 am. Several buildings shook under the impact and streets quickly filled up with panic-stricken people. However, at that time, no casualties or extensive damages were reported.

It was the onset of the tsunami waves, five in all and occurring half an hour of each other, that led to the carnage. When the first one came a little after 8.30 am, terror-stricken people started moving away from the sea. The second one struck around 9.20 am, the third at 10.20 am, the fourth at 10.40 am and the last at 11 am, causing the sea level to rise to more than 10 metres.

Had this not been winter when most fishermen slept indoors rather than outdoors, the toll would have touched thousands, officials said.

More than 800 died in the coastal belt of Kanyakumari and the tidal waves left lakhs of people homeless. In Colachel, more than 200 bodies — mostly children and the elderly — have been kept in the General Hospital. The Kochi naval base is expected to send helicopters to rescue the 600 people who have been stranded on the Vivekananda Rock Memorial since morning.

About 10 people were reportedly killed and 25 missing in Mandacadu. Around 975 houses dotting the coast have been damaged and the families have taken refuge in a nearby college. Sporadic incidents of robbery and looting were also reported from the village.

— With inputs from Krishnakumar