Eyewitness says little could have escaped wave

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 December 2004, 21:29 GMT]
“We went from the hospital to retrieve some bodies of people killed by the first wave near the Pandiruppu beach. We saw at a distance another massive wave, more than hundred feet high, speeding towards Kalmunaikudi. It was like a diagonal wall rising out of the sea. The sight was terrible. We ran for our lives. I do not believe that anything could have survived the force of that wave”, said a doctor at the Kalmunai base hospital Monday.

Doctor Murugesapillai Baghavan said he believed that scale of death and destruction in the Pandiruppu, Kalmunaikudi area could be much greater than what has been assessed so far.

“The wave would have sucked homes and people back into the sea. Few could have resisted its force. We think that whole areas have been buried under sand dug up by the wave’s power”, Dr. Baghavan said.

More than a thousand injured people have been treated at the Kalmunai Base Hospital until Sunday night, he added. “The hospital mortuary is full. We are piling up bodies outside the hospital”,

Seriously wounded patients have been sent to Amparai town. Evacuation is severely hindered by people who have crowded in their thousands on the main road in Kalmunai and Pandiruppu.

About hundred and sixteen bodies have been recovered so far in Thirukkovil, the large Tamil village 74 kilometres south of Batticaloa. More than hundred and fifty bodies have been recovered in Ninthavur, a Muslim, Tamil village near