Panic in coast as anniversary nears

Her home gone, her life disrupted by last year’s tsunami, Thangamma Thazhcheyil is fiercely determined that her two daughters study &#1...

Her home gone, her life disrupted by last year’s tsunami, Thangamma Thazhcheyil is fiercely determined that her two daughters study ‘‘as long as they can’’, so they can find a living that isn’t in the thrall of the sea.

But not today. For the next three days—until December 26 passes—Thazhcheyil has forbidden her daughters from going to school. ‘‘They say the tsunami is coming again, and I don’t want to let me children out of my sight if it does,” says a grim Thazhcheyil, a sewing mistress and wife of an out-of-work fishnet-hauler in the Kerala hamlet of Azhikeel, part of a 17-km-long peninsula in Kollam district where 128 people died.

Across the subcontinent in Akkarapettai, east of Nagapattinam where 6,065 died, fisherwoman and widow Saguntala Singaravelu, will pack up and flee to town with her daughter and two sons. “I have heard the rumours, and I must leave,” she said. “Too much is at stake—my children, my life.”

Story continues below this ad

Nagapattinam Collector J Radhakrishnan isn’t sure where the rumours began. “Someone” told him rumours were spreading in tsunami-hit Cuddalore. “We have planned a series of events near the sea front (for the tsunami anniversary), and we hope it will douse the rumours. In Kerala, family after family that The Indian Express questioned finally pointed to an astonishing source: the district collector. “It is he who sent word through his officials and others,” said Mini, a fisherman’s wife.

Kollam Collector B Srinivas says this is no rumour. He claims he’s taking his cue from Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal who said on television a few days ago that US scientists had reported the possibility of an earthquake measuring 8.9 on the Richter scale off Sumatra, the same area where the tsunami originated. On December 27, Srinivas is even calling a meeting of all district officials to review safety plans.

Speaking to The Indian Express in Delhi, Sibal denied having made any such reference on television. ‘‘There is no way anybody can predict an earthquake. A TV channel came to me for comments on some US scientists’ prediction of an earthquake in Sumatra and I told them the same thing. I don’t know where the Collector heard me speak,’’ he said. “If nothing happens, we will be very happy,” reasoned Srinivas. “But there is nothing wrong with erring on the right side.” Srinivas yesterday held meetings with village committees and warned them to keep watching the news.

“We should never be taken off guard,” he said. “I can’t understand why this is happening,” said Father Romance Anthony, director of the Quilon Social Service Society, a Christian organization that coordinated much relief work and building of new homes over the past year. “It is just a rumour,” he pleads to nervous residents of a relief camp of Sakthikulangara, just outside the town of Kollam (formerly Quilon).

Story continues below this ad

“God has saved us father,” said Mary Anthony, a fisherwoman’s wife shyly. “I hope he does it again if anything happens.”