Talk:Vailankanni

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== Veilankanni – the worst hit by Tsunami ==]]

Tsunami has brought devastating changes in South East Asia. It has done its due in the coastal region of Tamil Nadu. Its 720 km east coast has been hit severely. Of all the places Nagapattinam and Veilankanni are the worst hit places.

Veilankanni for the few centuries has a marked place in the Christian world. In the past few decades the glory and fame of this noted Marian shrine has grown in multi fold. Every day thousands of people flock here to pray, to fulfill votives to Our Lady of Good Health. In a special way many people prefer to spend their Christmas time in this sanctuary. They are from different walks of life and different parts of India.

The 26th of December 2004 dawn like any other Sunday. The shrine, the surrounding places and the seashore were bustling with a lot of activities. The masses were being celebrated and thousands took part joyfully in thanking God for all the graces that they received. Thousands tonsured their heads and went to the sea for the holy tip.

The mass in Malayalam language begun At 9 a.m. By 9.15 a.m. there was a big sound and the could not believe their eyes. The waves rose to an unimaginable height and started coming towards the shrine with a great speed and enormous force. It washed away all the shops, came up to the Viyagula Matha chapel, and with the same force got back to the sea, bringing down the structures and taking the people with it. On the other side in the backwater river the water entered violently demolishing all the compound walls, and water entered through the retreat center. It pulled down walls along the Stations of the Cross and brought with it a lot of dead bodies. In few minutes the adoration chapel, bus stand, parking zone and many lodges were filled with 4 feet water. After five minutes there was a big cue and cry and scattered bodies everywhere. The electricity went off, communication means went dead. The holy town became a ghost town. People immediately started running out of veilankanni. The transport got stand still.

As no one was prepared for this disaster, all one could do was to stare at one another with helplessness. It took a few hours before something could move. By late afternoon the shrine officials started moving to do something. First the pilgrims were asked to get out of veilankanni. The local residents ran off by themselves. The shrine workers too ran off from their respective work places.

With the little work force available slowly the rescue operation begun. The only thing that they could do was collecting the dead bodies. As there were no enough people, on the first day little was done. A request was made to the parishes to sent volunteers to help them out. A few parishes responded immediately, volunteers from Anna Nagar and Madakottai parishes arrived veilankanni shortly after midnight. They were about 80 youths.

On 27th early in the morning they started collecting the bodies. They did every thing with bare hands. They had no instruments to do these things. There was neither medical team nor government officials. At the end of the day more than 1000 (one thousand) bodies were collected. Some of them were identified but many were not. I could see a score of people who lost their entire family. I met a boy called Tony who lost 11 members of his family and was a lone survivor. There were many more who were left behind alone. Many could not even get back the bodies. Among the dead there were many children. Late in the evening the unidentified bodies were buried in a mass grave.

As on 28th the recovery of body still continues. The number could be as same as on 27th. But we do not know how many more got washed away by the sea and never came back. We started getting information from distant places that bodies reached there. Only God knows how many got perished. But it is sure that only in veilankanni it is not less than a few thousands.

Until now the power has not been restored, there is no water and food. From 26th morning food and water has been sent from Tanjore. We hope that the situation improves in a few days time. But the restructuring and rehabilitation would take long time. That certainly involves much energy, huge sum of money and the providence of God.

Fra. Sahayaraj osm

[edit] Article Needs Cleanup

This article is supposed to be about Velankanni, the town, its location, people, importance, economy and so forth. The huge bulk of the article deals with a narrative of the events in Velankanni after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami hit it. What should we do about this article? Should we spin off the events as a separate article "Impact of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake in Velankanni", or should we make it a section within the current article? Is there anything else we can do? --Brhaspati 00:11, 2005 Jan 5 (UTC)

Now that's a clean up for a useless place.

-narayana

[edit] Wikify

This article needs links to other Wikipedia articles (there's not a single one between the lead paragraph and the External links section). See Wikipedia:How to edit a page or Wikipedia:Links for information on linking. - dcljr (talk) 04:30, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I've started the wikification/cleanup. Someone want to take over? - dcljr (talk) 18:41, 2 August 2005 (UTC)