When the Sea Swallowed a City Whole

#18 nb, point taken.

#19 sadna,
I am not opposed to any measures that could be undertaken to minimize death and destruction. I am only questioning their effectiveness. Re: cyclones, they always are preceded by rain and there is plenty of warning - typically a day or two. Warnings can be broadcast over radio & TV. Preparing for tidal waves which could strike within and hour or two would require installing a real time warning system along the entire coast most of which is inhabited. It`s a different system altogether, would require too much money to install and maintain and would require training people in this new warning system. I don`t think it can piggyback on the existing warning system. Simply broadcasting warning could work except it could have the opposite effect of sending people towards the sea trying to get to their children, family or friends. It seems like a tough problem to address in a poor country.

Thanks for digging up the info on early malayalam. As far as I know maNipravaLam is an admixture of tamil & samskrit and was widely in use among the vaishnavaites (Iyengars) of TN. Maybe this definition is peculiar to TN since your source says it`s a mixture of malayalam & samskrit.

soysauce #32
You will like this story:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/01/02/india.hero.dog.ap/index.html

In Kerala, an Amritamayi supporter who was online alerted the Ashram and saved a lot of people. In Thailand, an English school girl who had learned about tsunamis and recognised what the withdrawing of the sea meant alerted a whole hotel full of people and saved lives.

Many people who had only a few minutes warning were able to save themselves.

Having an emergency alarm system is not one of prohibitive scale or money. If we can have microwave towers crisscrossing the country as backup communications links, if we can launch a probe to the moon as we plan to, we can certainly have (for instance) a network of alarm sirens on the east coast, a mechanism for sounding alarms and increased awareness among the coastal population/administration.

It is a question of wanting to do so and finding ways, not a question of money or feasibility. If it gets used only 50 years from now, so what. Given that on both coasts and in A&N so many people have been severely affected in so many ways, starting on something now to reduce grief and loss a few decades from now, only constitutes good long-term planning.

Ref Asli-Masanamuthu#33

[#31 Harimau,
Thanks for a useful post.]

ALL my posts are useful. I am still wondering what your position on Silappathikaram is. Is it a casteist poem to be banned forever? What would be your reaction if I wrote a mythical story and exempted brahmins from retribution on the basis of their birth? Since Kannagi mentions chaste women as a separate category, are we to assume that unchaste women were sufficiently commonplace in Sangam days despite all the crap one hears about ``karpu``? Come on, here is an area ripe for research though I wonder if any of the findings would be politically palatable.

[Are people returning to the beach?]

The Marina is being cleaned but people seem to have stayed on the paved sidewalk of the road skirting the beach (Beach Road, now renamed Kamarajar Salai). The fishermen of Elliott`s Beach have been provided temporary shelter at the Olcott Memorial High School grounds. What will happen to them when school reopens in a few days after the Christmas/New Year break? Last Sunday the police prevented people from going to the sea at Elliott`s Beach and people had to content themselves with staying on the road and looking at the sea from a couple of hundred meters away.

[There are photos from Madras on Samankumar.com. If you have pictures, please post them on Chowk.]

Please look at any of the daily paper`s websites for photos. Try www.dinamalar.com and I am sure you can also find webpages for Dinamani, Dina Thanthi, Malai Murasu, Malai Malar, etc. The vernacular papers have much better photo coverage than The Hindu. There was no point in going anywhere if I was not going to be allowed near the affected areas. Anyway, I personally find it morbid to intrude on other people`s grief.

Also, the waves probably rose less than 5 feet in Chennai. The real tragedy has been in Nagapattinam, Tiruvarur and Kanyakumari districts. When you see the ferries used to transport people (we are talking of vessels capable of carrying a hundred people each at least) to the offshore rock islands in Kanyakumari (Cape Comorin) sitting on the rocks in the mainland, one can imagine the amount of water that came in. Similarly in Nagapattinam, a motorized fishing boat was found a quarter of a mile inland sitting on top of a bridge. It is estimated that the waves rose at least 25 feet in Nagapattinam. At that height, I would have been seeking shelter on the flat roof of our house. Any higher and it would have been bye-bye!

For some reason, the Marina and localities immediately south of it such as San Thome and Foreshore Estates were greatly affected. The Adyar river to the south of Foreshore Estates probably provided a large escape valve for waves and spared the areas immediately to its south except for the fishermen`s slum on Elliott`s Beach. No damage in Tiruvanmiyur or farther south. One had to go to Mahabalipuram (50 miles south) to see water coming ashore in large quantities. When the sea retreated in Mahabalipuram, the submerged rock temples were visible for a while till the sea returned. South of Mahabalipuram, the waves seemed to have increased in size and ferocity and hence the reports of destruction and damage starting with Pondicherry.

Soysauce if ur still following this - the Shrub got his nose rubbed into the ground - the parallel group that Inja was a part of has been dissolved! Yoohoo!