I was trying to contact my parents for
nearly five hours and I could make no contact. Our landline was not working and so I tried their cellphones but that also didn’t work. I
was in touch with my brother after trying for a long time. He works in Chennai but had
gone to his in-laws’ place in Coimbatore for Christmas and he also tried to contact my parents for many hours but couldn’t... my sister also lives in Chennai but she had gone to her in-laws’ place Madurai...
My mom told me they were in the church, which is within 1.24 miles from the coast, when they heard a lot of noise outside.
And everyone went out to see what happened and they saw many people on the street
and water had come in to the land.
Usually water doesn’t come that much inland
so they were all scared and ran to get
into a high-rise building... Floods and
cyclone are common in Nagapattinam but
we generally get warnings and we will go and stay in nearby relatives place ...we go to Thanjavur or Myladuthurai, but this time it came as a shock to my parents... it was abnormal... They got in touch with me when they managed to take a van to go to Myladuthurai, which is 11.16 miles from Nagapattinam...
I kept trying to contact my friend but the phone lines were not working... I got to talk to some of my friends in Nagapattinam yesterday [Dec. 28].
They were saying how horrifying it is. And they told in Nagapattinam itself there are three villages still not accessible due to flood and rain. These three villages, Akkaraipettai, Keechankuppam and Nambiar Nagar, predominantly of fishermen families, are completely washed out it seems.
So horrifying... my friend was describing
he had to run two kilometers continuously
to escape. The water was so fast and furious with mud that people caught within it would have no way to escape.
I was talking to my parents. My dad told my mom was talking in her sleep. She is really shaken with this. I tried to console her but could not. I tried to explain her she is far, far luckier than many. My dad has gone to Nagapttinam to take some documents, my certificates and certain other things. They are leaving to Chennai and will stay in my brother’s house for some time till they come back to normal.
My parents have been living in Nagapattinam for more than 30 years now. They have never seen anything like this before. I have always advised my parents to move to Chennai but they haven’t done it yet. My mother still works for a government school and my father is retired. I want my mother to get voluntary retirement and move to Chennai at least now...
* Association for India’s Development (AID) is accepting donations to help survivors of the tsunami. Make checks payable to AID and mark check to ‘Earthquake Relief Fund’ at the following address: AID, P.O. Box 149, College Park, MD 20741
* BAPS Care International’s leader His Holiness Pramukh Swami Maharaj has urged all people to help. It has launched an appeal fund. To make online donations please visit http://www.bapscare.org or contact Shailendra Adroja at , or Biren Gandhi at
* New Jersey-based
Bharat Sevashram Sangha of North America Inc. has appealed for donations. You can mark the check to ‘Earthquake/Flood Relief Fund.’ The donations will be sent directly to the Sangha’s central relief fund in Kolkata, India, for proper distribution.
* Federation of Indian Associations and New York Tamil Sangam are planning to collect funds from the U.S. to help the affected families. Checks can be mailed to: FIA-Special Fund, 32-75 Steinway Street, Suite 208, Astoria, NY 11103, or to New York Tamil Sangam-Special Fund, 7 Park Drive East Old Westbury NY 11568.
* Federation of Kerala Association in North America Inc. (FOKANA) is making an initial contribution of Rs 500,000 to Kerala Chief Minister’s Relief Fund. All those interested in making contributions can do by writing a check to FOKANA at the following address: Mathew Varghese (FOKANA treasurer), 9759 Savona Winds Dr., Delray Beach, FL, 33446.
* Govinda Sanskar Center and the members of the Jersey City Asian Merchant Association have asked for generous donations. You can make your check payable to: Govinda Sanskar Center, 783 Newark Avenue, Jersey City, NJ 07306. For further information please contact or .
* Hindu American Temple and Cultural Center in Marlboro. Phone:
* Indian American Foundation has urged the community to contribute to the Foundation’s Tsunami Relief Fund at the following address: 43 West, 24th Street, #9b, NY, NY 10010.
* National Association of Asian Indian Christians in the USA, Inc (NAAIC) has urged people to donate. You can send money directly to: NAAIC, 1602 Plainfield Ave., South Plainfield, NJ 07080. Please mark on the check which area you are sending your contribution to. If you, for instance, want to make it to Chennai and Nagapattinam, please mark the check to Church of South India and send it to NAAIC and the organization will send it to CSI Synod.
* Network of Indian Professionals New York Chapter is collecting money to aid victims. To make a contribution please go to http://netip-ny.kinetra.org/tsunamirelieffund.
* Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund is distributing relief to the survivors of the Tsunami disaster. Contribution checks should be made out to the ‘Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund’ and sent to the Head of Chanery, Embassy of India, 2107 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC, 20008. For more information, call
* Share and Care Foundation of New Jersey has sanctioned an initial disbursement of $10,000 towards relief work in India. Donations may be sent to: Share and Care Foundation, 676, Winters Avenue, Paramus, NJ, 07652.
* South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA) has distributed mailers to its members and others to send donations directly to Prime Minister’s Relief Fund, PMO, South Block, New Delhi. This is an official fund of the Indian prime minister’s office that monitors and directs donations made to disaster relief.
* Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America has set up a fund to assist the victims and survivors of the Tsunami tragedy. You can send your contributions to the fund by writing a check payable to VHPA, including ‘Tsunami Victims’ in the memo line. For more information, visit www.vhp-america.org.
* World Malayalee Council has set up the ‘WMC Earthquake Fund.’ Contributions can be sent to: Varghese Alexander, WMC America Region, P.O. Box 496404, Garland, TX,
(Compiled from press releases by Bhavna Kaul)
Herbert Caldwell, Survivor, Andaman Islands
‘That morning we were at the church when it happened’
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Herbert Caldwell
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That morning we were at the Church when it happened. All of us were very scared when we saw those waves and ran back in to the church.
Many others also came in to the church to take shelter. But those who were fishing or working in the harbor were swiped into the sea. We stayed in the church for a long time thinking it might come back again.
We had no communication with anyone outside the island and we thought we cannot expect any help from the outside world. So we started helping each other ourselves...
All the ships and fishing boats in the harbor are damaged totally. Our house is about a mile away from the shore inside the island and we didn’t go there for many hours
...But when we went to see whether the house still remained, it was not demolished by the Tsunami, though we found a big crack in the house.
But by God’s grace that was all the damage we as a family suffered... there are thousands of people who have been killed by the killer waves... I think at least 2,000 people are dead ...there are so many bodies floating all over... We are still waiting for rescue people to come in...
Kamalakannan Ganapathy, 28, MS in Control System Engineering student,
West Virginia Institute of Technology
‘My friend called me and told me there had been an earthquake’
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Kamalakannan Ganapathy
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My friend called and told me there had been an earthquake in Chennai so I called my home immediately ...I called home at 8 o’clock India time and spoke to my mother but she said Nagapattinam didn’t feel it. So I spoke to her for a while and forgot about it.
But I believe exactly 40 minutes later floods came into the streets. After about four hours I tried to call my home but the phone lines had gone dead. My mother and brothers live almost a mile away from the coast. My brothers have their own stationery store in the town. I couldn’t get in touch with them also.
Then I called one of my sisters who lives in Thiruvarur. She said everyone in our family is doing fine... she had personally gone and seen my mother and brothers so I’m not worried.
Yesterday [Dec. 28] night, I was finally able to reach my parents and brother through phone.
My brother was saying he can not even go near the government hospital. There are scores of bodies lying on the streets it seems. And water had entered into these hospitals on Sunday morning, taking the lives of the patients who could not run away.
Lot of our relatives and friends were staying in coastal villages and my brother had no idea of them. And no one could go in to see what happened to them. He was telling there are bodies lying on the farms and even on the streets unclaimed, unidentified on the way from Veilankanni and Nagapattinam. It is like a mass graveyard.
My brother said casualties are more than 6,000 in Nagai alone. Still lots of dead bodies are unattended and the whole place smells like hell. They fear diseases.
He said that for some times they are identifying the body and they are burying but now they are just taking all the bodies in the truck and just burying, because lot of dead bodies are still there.
I also contacted one of my friends named Karthik in Nagai. He just escaped from the tidal waves. He lived near the beach. His house is totally damaged.
He said two areas, named Akkarapattai and Keechakuppam, are unattended, as people are still not able to go there and recover the bodies. In these two places, a lot of fishing industry people are living.
These two places are fully washed out. Merely some of them escaped, he told to me. He has lot of relatives and friends over there in these two places and he didn’t know what happened to them because of no access.
Tsunamis kill 125,000 and counting