Devastation at the famous Marina beach in Chennai, after the tsunami struck the Tamil Nadu coast on Dec. 26. PHOTO INSET, A hospital worker ties a tag on the dead body of a child at the Karapitiya hospital, south of Colombo on Dec. 27 after tsunami tidal waves lashed more than half of the country’s coastline. (Photos: AFP)

President George Bush announced Dec. 29 that Washington was joining India, Japan and Australia to form a joint task force for relief efforts in South and Southeast Asia.

As the 9.0 intensity undersea earthquake combined with giant tsunamis killed more than 125,000 people and counting, and devastated thousands of miles of coastline, and the international community sprung into action, Washington reacted to criticism that rich countries had been shorthanded in aid to poor.

Three days into the aftermath of the devastation, President Bush held a press briefing from his holiday sojourn in Crawford, Texas, to assure India and other countries his administration would be steadfast in its support and would see them through the immediate and long-term needs for recovery and reconstruction.

“...we have established a regional core group with India, Japan and Australia to help coordinate relief efforts,” President Bush said after he spoke to the leaders of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia. He noted that Secretary of State Colin Powell had worked hard to build an international coalition for immediate relief.

As a widespread gloom spread over the region in the festive season, estimates placed Sri Lanka and Indonesia at the top of list in lost lives numbering almost 110,000, with thousands still missing.

In India the toll was inching toward 14,000 by Dec. 30, with the bulk of the deaths being reported from Tamil Nadu and the Andaman and Nicobar. The numbers were expected to rise further as relief work got underway and the sea each day swept back to shore dozens of the victims it had claimed on what has now come to be called Black Sunday –– Dec. 26, 2004.

“We are committed to helping the affected countries in the difficult weeks and months that lie ahead,” President Bush pledged. “And I assure those leaders that this is just only the beginning of our help,” he emphasized, referring to the $35 million so far announced by the administration.

Washington has also deployed disaster experts to the region, and is dispatching a Marine expeditionary unit, the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and the maritime preposition squadron from Guam.

A tragedy of a gigantic proportions, the worst the world has seen in living memory –– not only in terms of the number of dead, but also in its geographical scale, experts said it was one that could have been avoided and minimized if a proper warning system had been in place. India has already announced it is going ahead with setting up a system for the Indian Ocean, and Australia announced it is moving to extend its system to cover this region.

As relief and offers of help poured in from across India and abroad, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh initially put off a trip to the tsunami-hit regions so as not to hamper relief efforts and met cabinet colleagues to take stock of the situation.

A shocked nation, India nevertheless rose to reach out not only to its own beleaguered millions in the south, but also to Sri Lanka and Maldives allocating $22 million and $11 million, respectively.

Indian military and paramilitary personnel, governmental bodies, nongovernmental organizations and civilian volunteers fanned out in the worst hit Tamil Nadu and Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal to search for corpses and for distributing supplies and medicines and chlorine tablets fearing impending epidemics of cholera and malaria. The army and civilian groups began the work of estimating damage.

Between them, Tamil Nadu and the Andamans account for over 12,000 of the estimated 14,000 dead. At press time, the death toll in Pondicherry was close to 400, in Kerala to close to 170 and in Andhra Pradesh to nearly 110. As hopes of finding survivors faded and the fear of epidemics gripped the tsunami-hit regions, relief workers frantically looked for the dead so as to dispose of the rapidly decomposing bodies. Andaman and Nicobar Islands arguably suffered the worst losses as, besides the estimated 3,000 dead, some 2,000 were missing.

The federal government on Dec. 28 and 29 sanctioned Rs. 7 billion ($155 million) to fund relief operations. It has received Rs. 170 million ($3.7 million) as donations to the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund so far.

Hundreds of people, mainly fishermen and children, are missing in Tamil Nadu with whole fishing villages wiped out and corpses still washing ashore. The toll in the state was tipped to rise further. Masked rescue workers trudged through knee-deep sludge to extricate corpses from the flattened and ravaged landscape while military helicopters looked for the missing and possible survivors along the coast.

In Tamil Nadu districts such as Nagapattinam, dazed men and women walked through clusters of bodies with photographs of their missing relatives. At Kanyakumari, locals counted 25 tourists among the hundreds of retrieved corpses. The number of dead in the district was reported to be 625.

Small residual tsunamis, which weather officials predicted would subside within a few days, kept victims on tenterhooks days after the onslaught.

Even at Kalpakkam, home to India’s first indigenously built nuclear power plant, nearly 80 people were said to have died. National Security Adviser J.N. Dixit said the facility was safe.

Home Minister Shivraj Patil said food, water, clothing and shelter continued to be the most essential commodities in all the affected areas. He said about 80,000 people were living in relief camps in Tamil Nadu, 30,000 in Andhra Pradesh and 20,000 in Pondicherry.

Official government counts put eight Indians were among the thousands killed in Sri Lanka.