Memories of the tsunami – The Hindu

Debris of huts and trawlers are strewn around Cuddalore beach on December 31, 2004, five days after it was struck by killer tsunami waves.
| Photo Credit: PTI

It was a close shave with death for Gagandeep Singh Bedi on December 26, 2004, when the Indian Ocean tsunami struck Tamil Nadu. The Cuddalore District Collector was at Hotel Tamil Nadu on the sea front of Mamallapuram to attend an AIDS workshop when he got a call at around 9 a.m. A fisherman at Cuddalore told him that the sea had “flooded” and destroyed his village. When Mr. Bedi was about to end the call, he saw a huge wave in front of his hotel and ran out of the room. It was only then that he realised the magnitude of the disaster.

Mr. Bedi rushed to Cuddalore. He travelled through Tindivanam, as it was not safe to travel on Chennai’s East Coast Road. “I first visited the government hospital, where I saw a large number of bodies,” recalls Mr. Bedi, who is now Additional Chief Secretary, Rural Development and Panchayat Raj. Thanks to his team of officers in the district which included Rajendra Ratnoo, who is now Executive Director of the National Institute of Disaster Management, D. Jagannathan, who is Commissioner of Commercial Taxes in the Tamil Nadu government, and Anu George, who is one of the Secretaries to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin, he initiated the process of emergency relief. “Within [a] few hours after the tsunami, the district administration had swung into action to rescue the affected people and taken up rehabilitation measures to bring [back] the normalcy of life,” states the Cuddalore District Disaster Management Plan, 2024.

One of the key decisions Mr. Bedi had to take pertained to the disposal of bodies. Considering the gravity of the situation, the State government acceded to the proposal of the Cuddalore administration for relaxing the stipulation of post mortem before disposing the bodies. “The then Commissioner of Revenue Administration and State Relief Commissioner, R. Santhanam, got the clearance for my request in no time,” recalls Mr. Bedi. After discussions with senior members of the fishing community, mass burials were arranged on the evening of December 26.

The scale of destruction was unprecedented. Mr. Bedi says the loss of lives and cattle was “quite significant”: 610 people died in Cuddalore and 38 people went missing. Public infrastructure was affected. Thirty-one coastal villages were affected and some 5,000 fishing vessels were damaged.

Cuddalore got a lot of attention nationally and internationally. Film actors such as Vivek Oberoi, Smriti Irani, and Poonam Dhillon, Swiss tennis player Roger Federer, and former U.S. President Bill Clinton either came down to Tamil Nadu or were involved in relief work. Mr. Oberoi was criticised though — the then Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, later blamed him for doing nothing and trying to get publicity. “But celebrities have the potential of generating goodwill. We, the authorities, sought to tap that and succeeded to a large extent. At the same time, we maintained a respectable distance from them,” Mr. Bedi says.

The southernmost district of Kanniyakumari suffered the largest death toll (799) after Nagapattinam (6,065). “There were 72 people who could never be traced. As many as 44,000 families in 33 coastal villages were affected,” says Sunil Paliwal, who is Chairman of the Chennai Port Trust. He was transferred from Theni to Kanniyakumari as Collector nearly two weeks after the tsunami.

Given its location, the district was not in the limelight the way Nagapattinam and Cuddalore were. However, that was not a problem for Mr. Paliwal and his team. “The district administration took up several measures on its own. Mr. Santhanam was extremely responsive and supported us.”

What he remembers the most is that the delicately balanced religious mix of people in the district (Hindus constitute around 48%, Christians 46% and Muslims 4%, as per the 2011 Census) was no barrier to the district administration for undertaking relief and rehabilitation measures. “I would call Kanniyakumari a place of perfect communal harmony,” Mr. Paliwal says, adding that he could see a sense of unity among the people in times of adversity.

Both Mr. Bedi and Mr. Paliwal continue to be in touch with the people of the two districts. In their assessment, the people have left behind the trauma of the tsunami.