Sri Lanka marks two decades of Tsunami with national day of remembrance

Colombo, Dec 26 (PTI) With a two minutes silence observed nationally, Sri Lanka on Thursday marked the 20th anniversary of the South Asian Tsunami that had killed over 30,000 in the island nation.
     Sri Lanka marks December 26 as the 'National Safety Day' and the main memorial ceremony was held at Peraliye, about 90 km from Colombo in the southern province, where over 3,000 people died in the world’s worst train tragedy caused due to Tsunami.
     The 9.1 magnitude earthquake induced Tsunami was first felt in the island’s eastern coast before moving south resulting in devastation beyond belief.
     At 9.25 am on December 26, 2004, the train from Colombo to the southern town of Matara was hit by the raging Tsunami waves and within no time, the train and its tracks became a mangled heap killing all on board. Some villagers who had got onto the train thinking they would be safe too perished.
     “This was the world’s biggest train tragedy with over 3,000 dying,” said Paraliye Wimala, who heads the local Buddhist temple and is now in-charge of the board that maintains the monument to commemorate the victims.
     The Reverend Wimala said over 3,000 Tsunami victims from the village had been buried in the three mass graves located on either side of the monument.
     He said the need to preserve the grave site was important as two of the graves have already been covered with mangroves and shrubs.
     At 9.25 am on Thursday, the train came to a halt at the same place where it was hit with the Tsunami waves 20 years ago. Relatives of some of the victims were seen carrying flowers to pay tribute at the nearby monument.
     Twenty years on, Peraliye is a site for many museums and abandoned plots of land as their owners disappeared without a trace.
     “I don’t want to talk about it - it hurts so much even after 20 years,” Thushanthi Jayani, who lost her father-in-law and her six year old niece in the tragedy, said.
     The powerful undersea megathrust earthquake, which registered a magnitude of 9.1, struck off the coast of Sumatra Island, Indonesia on December 26, 2004 prompting a series of turbulent Tsunami waves that ravaged the coasts of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, including Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Thailand, Maldives, and Myanmar.
     “Sri Lanka was one of the hardest-hit countries with over 40,000 fatalities and property damage worth several million rupees. Thousands were left homeless as waves pushed debris several kilometres inland, pounding buildings into rubble,” news portal Adaderana.lk said.
     Since 2005, December 26 has been declared as 'National Safety Day' and commemoration events are held in remembrance of all those who lost their lives in the country due to the various natural disasters, including the Tsunami disaster, the portal added.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)