Help Reaches Tsunami Destroyed Nagapattinam Beach, India

Varsha was among the OB India staff that reached India’s Nagapattinam Beach this week. Here are excerpts from the experience…

“If you walk onto India’s Nagapattinam beach now, you will never be able to gauge the tragedy that happened there on December 26th. You can feel the ocean breeze on your face and the soft sand shift as you walk, and then the smell hits you. It is a thick heavy smell. Smell of something burnt. Smell of death. Then it also hits you that you may be walking over a person buried deep down in the sand.

“Look up and see the vast ocean before you and the havoc it has done on the inhabitants of this beach. House are flattened. Boats lifted from the harbor and smashed into bits about four miles away. Then you meet the survivors. Some have come there to stare at what they have lost. Some try to retrieve some of their belongings. Some come just to mourn for their losses. Such human tragedy is unimaginable.

“We met Manimaran on the Nagapattinam beach when we asked for directions. He was limping and started to tell us his story. He lived in an ancestral home near the beach. The morning of the tsunami he was inside the house when he heard his sister cry out. He heard a huge roaring noise and thought a helicopter was flying over their house. But when he came outside he saw a huge black wave 10 meters high come crashing down towards his house. He rushed back inside and clung on to the beam of his living room. His sister was thrown inside the house with the first wave and Manimaran caught her. He lost her once, but was able to hold onto her again. Manimaran saw all his earthly possessions being swept away into the sea. His TV set, and fridge & washing machine, all gone in an instant.

“Ten minutes later, it all ended as quickly as it had started. But the tsunami had left Manimaran a very poor man. His two boats were smashed. All his earthly possessions lost to the sea. But he was shaken to the core upon discovering that ten members of his family had lost their lives.

“His sister had lost consciousness and woke up in the hospital with a bone fracture. She was told that two of her four sons had gone to stay with another relative. In reality they were dead. But when she persisted in wanting to see them, she was told the truth. The desire to live left her.

“There are 2,500 survivors from this beach; they all took shelter in a nearby temple. Twelve hundred are feared dead. Four hundred of them were children. An entire generation has been lost.

“Although the Navy set up a medical camp in the premises of the temple, they only are able to treat the superficial wounds. When the survivors heard that OBI India had a blood testing facility, ECG facility and malaria testing capabilities, they begged us to come and conduct a medical camp. They even agreed to build a temporary shelter for our team so that we will not have to conduct the camp in the heat.

“Each house there has lost at least 1-2 members. The grief is unimaginable. You feel so helpless. You want to hug them, cry with them, and console them all at the same time. What do you tell a mother who has lost her children, or a grandparent who has lost his only grandchild?

“If we were to just go and stand there, it is enough for them…because they will just flock around you and start talking. These people have seen and felt things that we can’t even imagine. We don’t want to imagine.”

Note: On Wednesday, January 5th, our OB India team treated about 1,000 patients in this area with medical services and medicine. A mobile clinic was also sent out to patients in remote areas. In addition, we served approximately 2,000 survivors a hot meal and distributed around 1,000 blankets.