Four years since Tsunami devoured The Samudra Devi (Ocean Queen)
Named with grim irony Samudradevi, or Queen of the Sea, the train that left Colombo Fort station shortly after 6am on Sunday for its regular run to the southern city of Galle was full even by Sri Lankan standards.
As many as 1,700 passengers crammed its carriages or hung from the sides. It was a holiday weekend as well as a full-moon day when Buddhists offer special monthly prayers and people travel to visit relatives.
For most of its length the railway runs close to Sri Lanka’s west coast, sometimes within sight of the beach. At Telwatta the track cuts through thick palm groves and the sea, 200 metres away, is barely visible.
Without warning, two hours after leaving Colombo, most of the train’s hot and swaying throng were dead. A giant wave roared through the trees and threw the carriages off the rails, filling them instantly with water.
At the disaster scene yesterday scores of troops were lifting bodies out of the wreckage and the water logged chaos of fallen trees and ruined buildings which surrounded it. Working in teams of four, soldiers wearing black scarves over their noses and mouths against the stench carried bloated and stiff corpses on stretchers and placed them on a patch of flat ground. At least 100 bodies could be seen.
Most of the windows in the two nearest carriages that were lying on their sides were open, but one had its glass broken, perhaps a sign that desperate passengers had smashed it in an effort to escape.
They had little chance. The wall of water must have been at least six metres (20ft) high, to judge from missing or displaced tiles on the roofs of a large family house near the wrecked train.
The Queen of the Sea’s fate qualifies as the world’s worst rail accident, outstripping the death toll of around 800 who died when a cyclone blew a train off a bridge into the Bagmati river in Bihar, India, in 1981.
Scores of people in the community of Telwatta also drowned when the water surged in and destroyed their houses. It was hard to tell how many of the dead being recovered at the disaster scene were passengers. As the soldiers laid out more and more bodies, villagers stood silently watching in case missing relatives were found.
Hundreds of the dead were moved from the site on Monday to Batapola hospital, about 10 miles away. There the ghastly spectacle was repeated yesterday, with several rows of contorted corpses lying in the building’s grassy forecourt.
“Nearly 700 bodies have been released to relatives already, but we still have 400 here,” said Dr JM Jayatilake, the medical officer in charge.
The exact number of passengers who were on the train is unclear. Dr Jayatilake said police believed there were 1,700. This was based, they said, on Colombo Fort station’s record of 1,500 ticket sales for Galle, plus an estimated 200 who, as usual, get on the train at various stops without tickets.
“Only a few people escaped alive, between 10 and 20,” Dr Jayatilake added.
A forensic team from Colombo was photographing and finger-printing the unclaimed bodies at Batapola hospital so that records would be available for any relatives searching for their loved ones, once the dead were buried.
Many people were doing their own searching. Laknath Chandima, 28, a sales representative for a phone company in Colombo, was supervising a group of men who were moving lumps of masonry from the site of his parents’ home close to the beach. “We found my father and he has been buried at my aunt’s place,” he said. “My mother and two sisters are still missing.”
As the number of bodies increases, pressure is mounting for immediate burial without going through identification formalities so as to minimise the risk of disease.
Few of the houses in the area are habitable but many survivors are living in Buddhist temples on higher ground, and going back to their ruined homes by day to salvage what they can. The roads are full of pedestrians.
“In many cases the bodies have already become too bloated to be easily recognised. From now on they will have to be buried immediately,” Sub-Inspector WS de Silva said at Mitiyagoda police station, two miles from the derailed train.
Three men could be seen in a holding cell in the police station. They were among six men arrested while stealing jewellery and cash from bodies, he said.
Plans for burying even those bodies which have been photographed are being thwarted by bureaucratic arguments and a shortage of fuel. The authorities have started rationing petrol and diesel in the disaster-stricken areas.
“We asked OG Gurege, the district secretary in Ambalangoda, to give us diesel and excavators to bury the dead,” said Dr Jayatilake. “We hoped to start this morning but have not been able to.”
In his office, surrounded by a crowd of people asking him to sign their fuel allocations, a harassed Mr Gurege diverted the blame to senior officials. “We made a request for excavators and nothing has yet been done. What can one man like me do?”
By Jonathan Steele in Telwatta, Sri Lanka (Wednesday December 29, 2004)
Source: The Guardian
Survivors tell of tsunami train horror
Survivors of what is believed to be the world’s worst rail accident have been telling the BBC News website of their experiences.
The Queen of the Sea was nearing its destination when the waves knocked it sideways.
Up to 1,500 people were crammed inside the train as it travelled 75 miles (110km) along the Sri Lankan coastline from Colombo to the southern city of Galle.
At least 802 died and hundreds remain unaccounted for.
The force of the wave threw the train’s eight cars into a bog and left the coastal railroad a twisted mess of metal.
Cart wheeling
Like Daya Wijaya Gunawardana, many passengers were with their families, heading off to visit friends and relatives during a holiday week.
As the tsunami engulfed the train, the Colombo restaurateur found himself stranded in a flooded carriage, cast adrift from his son and daughter.
“The train had stopped at signals,” Mr Gunawardana, 62, told the BBC News website.
“Then suddenly the sea flooded through the train, very high, very quick.
“The water came in about 60ft [20m] from the sea, and the whole train was filled with water. Then it fell over.”
Reeling from the waves the train spun over and over, cartwheeling four times before coming to rest on a hillock.
“I thought that we were killed, that we were dead,” said Mr Gunawardana. “But we prayed to our God and because of that I got up to a window and escaped.”
Mr Gunawardana spent 45 minutes trapped inside the train before he clambered to safety. “People were trying to escape, the whole thing was flooded so everybody tried to get out.”
Outside, amid the devastation, he found his son Duminda, 32, and daughter Kishani, 31. Neither was seriously injured.
“I heard that out of 1,500 people, 1,000 died. When I got out of the train there were a few wounded people, but not many.
“Most did not come out of the train. But my family all escaped. I have some pains on my body. It’s a narrow escape.”
Reunited, Mr Gunawardana and his children took sanctuary in a nearby temple but were forced to head to higher ground when fears grew of a second deadly wave.
The family trekked uphill for almost two miles before they reached a school.
By nightfall on Monday they made it back to Colombo by bus, travelling along inland roads not shattered by the waves.
‘Lots of children’
Tourist Danny Shahaf, an Israeli living in London, was also on the train travelling with a friend.
“That’s when I panicked,” he said, recalling the moment when the waves scattered the train’s carriages, turning his carriage on its side.
“It was so quick, it washed us so far away – the carriage kept filling up with water.
“I was telling my friend to run to the front of the carriage, the windows there were still above the water. I pushed my friend through the window to get her up out of the carriage.
“There was a woman next to me holding her baby trying to hold the window open with the other hand. As I tried to help her the carriage filled completely, the water pushing the window shut.
“Only my friend managed to get out…
“Back at the other end of the carriage it was dark, I held my breath, I thought, ‘This is how you die’.
“As I thought that, the train flipped again and the water slid away and I waded towards the light.”
Danny made his escape, but the woman with the baby was not so lucky.
“There were lots of children on the train,” he recalls.
‘Wall of water’
Shenth Ravindra, 25, from Crawley, Sussex, also survived the crash.
He escaped from his carriage onto a house and then walked two kilometres to a Buddhist pagoda for treatment, despite lacerating his leg.
After being reunited with his family at Heathrow airport on Thursday, he said: “The most frightening aspect was when I saw a second wave coming, there was a lot of screaming, the dynamics of the horizon had changed.
“I just saw this wall of water coming towards us and then the screaming and the shouting.”
Mr Ravindra, who said he had to make his way past the dead bodies of children as he escaped, still has metal in his body having survived a serious car crash in 1998.
Search called off
On Wednesday Buddhist monks led services for the dead, burying scores of bodies from the train in a mass grave.
They included villagers who had scrambled aboard during a 10-minute pause between the giant waves.
Three days after the disaster, rescuers called off the search for survivors.
A moment’s silence was held to commemorate the dead of all faiths.
“This was the only thing we could do. It was a desperate solution,” Venerable Baddegama Samitha, a monk who carried out the ritual, told the Associated Press.
“The bodies were rotting. We gave them a decent burial.”
Source: The BBC
A makara-like wave came crashing in says Samudra Devi head guard
December 26 was just another day for head guard Wanigaratne Karunathilake who left Maradana station at 6.40 a.m. accompanied by his assistant R.U.A. Gooneratne on the ill-fated Matara-bound Samudra Devi, which consisted of eight compartments. Recalling that day of horror, Mr. Karunathilake said some unusual events had occurred that day- which he now considers cruel acts of fate.
“Although the train is scheduled to leave Maradana at 6.40 a.m, invariably there is a delay of 15 to 30 minutes, but on December 26 for the first time in my career as a guard, we left Maradana Station sharp on time,” Mr. Karunathilake said. He also said they had a smooth run-until the tragedy struck- without the usual delays. Pointing out another coincidence he said the Samudra Devi which usually runs on a M7 engine, that day, was running on a more powerful M2 engine, which added speed to the journey. The train reached Ambalangoda by 9.18 a.m and left shortly evading the delay of unpacking parcels.”
Therefore, with six minutes to spare, the train reached Kahawa to see the departure signal indicating yellow which was a warning of an obstacle ahead. Little did anyone on that ill-fated train know that it was no man-made obstruction, but nature’s ferocity that was awaiting them as the train reached Thelwatte. “The block signal between Thelwatte and Seenigama, indicated red. At this point the driver J. Fernando, assistant driver N. Sivayogarajah, Gooneratne and I realised there was trouble ahead, and the train was brought to a halt. “Not even one minute passed, when I noticed a stream of vehicles moving to and fro along the level crossing ahead. I then heard a thundering noise like two current cables coming into contact and noticed some water trickling towards the tar road of the level crossing. There was no water on the railway track at that point.
“I was in the last compartment and Gooneratne was in the first when suddenly water gushed in, but not higher than our waists. I thought my eyes were playing tricks when I suddenly had a glimpse of young girl on top of a tree. She was crying budu amme mawa bera ganna . I got out of the train and since the level of water was still up to my waist, I swam towards the girl and brought her back to the train,” Mr. Karunathilake said.
Keeping with his duty of ensuring the safety of the passengers and the train, Mr. Karunathilake proceeded towards the rest of the compartments of the train to find several had been wrenched loose as a result. Just as he was inspecting the damage he saw a torrent of water about six to eight feet high gushing in. “Suddenly we heard a monstrous sound coming from the sea and a huge blackish-grey wave like that of a makara (dragon) rose high above the coconut trees,” Mr. Karunathilake said shuddering as he recalled those deadly few minutes. ” Passengers were screaming. I heard ithibiso being chanted by Buddhists and some Muslim boys praying to Allah,” he said.
“I quickly got out of the compartment through a window and managed to pull some more out. I saw Mr. Gooneratne being dragged away with many other passengers. All those who escaped the tsunami ran towards the temple at Thelwatte which was untouched,” Mr. Karunathilake said.
When he returned to the scene of the tragedy what greeted him was no different to a mass grave. “There were bodies everywhere. I saw the body of the driver J. Ferando but couldn’t pull it out as it was stuck between the door and the ground. ” Some of us crossed the river in a ferry and reached the Meetiyagoda Police Station. I only had my underwear on and it was like a god-send when I suddenly heard the voice of my friend Premasiri a foreman from Thelwatta, who gave me a sarong. When we got to the police station people were running for their lives and people were being taken to the safety of temples and schools in trucks and vans,” Mr. Karunathilake said.
By Randima Attygalle
Source: Sunday Times
WORLD’S WORST TRAIN DISASTERS
- December 2004: Telwatta, Sri Lanka – at least 1500 die when tsunami derails train
- February 2004: Neyshabur, Iran – at least 300 killed when a runaway train explodes
- June 2002: Dodoma region, Tanzania – at least 200 killed when passenger train collides with goods train
- Feb 2002: Egypt – 300 killed in fire on train travelling to Cairo
- Aug 1995: Uttar Pradesh, India – 300 killed in train collision
- June 1989: Ufa, Russia – More than 400 killed in gas explosion under two trains
- June 1981: Bihar, India – 800 killed when cyclone blows train into river
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