December 26th 2004 Tsunami: Six Months Later

The profound impact of the December 26th, 2004 tsunami on South and South-east Asia is shown by the use of the word 'tsunami' as a proper noun without any qualifying article or adjective: "Tsunami came, before Tsunami, after Tsunami," and so on. For those who live in areas affected by this tsunami, life is now pre-tsunami and post-tsunami.

In the first weeks, tragic personal stories and evocative visuals dominated our understanding of the tsunami's effects. Six months after this cataclysmic event, we are better-placed to assess its impact on many levels.

This Chaitanya guide compiles online resources that address several of these: damage assessments, recovery efforts and impact on politics, to start with. It is designed so as to devote one page to an exploration of each of these dimensions, with this introductory page focusing on impact and damage assessment.

Please note that while the tsunami affected peoples across Asia and the east coast of Africa and the global accounts linked here allude to them, the focus of this guide is on the South Asian region. Do not, however, hesitate to draw our attention to resources pertaining to other sites.

This first page is designed for teachers who might want the basic questions of what, where and who answered.

Three more pages are linked, each with analytical materials related to one specific set of issues. The first assesses the impact of the tsunami, both immediate and longterm. Damage and needs assessments are linked as well as official reports on specific dimensions of the tsunami's impact. The second page is devoted to reconstruction efforts: who is engaged, what is the range of projects undertaken, are there estimates of costs and time available and finally, are we finally able to identify lessons learned and best practices? The last page discusses the politics and international relations of tsunami relief.

First Questions: What, Where, Who?

What is a tsunami?

• From Google, Definitions of Tsunami on the Web.
• From Wikipedia, Tsunami.

What happened on December 26th 2004?

• From Wikipedia, 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. Includes information on casualties
• If you are interested in the geological details, see The Tsunami Page of Dr. George P.C.
  

Which parts of the world were affected by the December 26th 2004 tsunami?

Tsunami-affected areas, Source: WorldAtlas.com

The three South Asian states affected were Maldives, Sri Lanka and India. India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the coastal areas of Tamil Nadu were particularly affected, while the impact on the other two states was far less localized. Tsunami 2004 India: Relief, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction. Tsunami Sri Lanka. Maldives Tsunami News and Views. See also, World Food Programme map here (PDF).

Faces, names, stories

Disasters affect states and societies as a whole but each individual experiences and/or witnesses them in a very immediate, personal way. While this Chaitanya guide primarily brings together analytical reports and official studies, it places a small collection of stories and images of individuals here to remind us that this is ultimately a personal tragedy.

• Tsunami kills thousands across nations, The Hindu, December 27, 2004.
• Helen Lambourne, Tsunami: Anatomy of a Disaster, BBC News, March 27, 2004.
• Paul Watson, Parents left mourning: Could we have done more? Indian Express, December 30, 2004.

From Tamil Nadu, India:

• R. Sujatha, Heartrending scenes in hospital, The Hindu, December 27, 2004.
• Ramya Kannan, In the same boat, they pull together, The Hindu, January 28, 2005.
• S. Anand, Tamil Nadu: The Big Churn, Outlookindia.com, December 30, 2004.
• Krishnakumar, "Wave came when they were cheering the batsman," Indian Express, December 26, 2004.
• E.P. Unny, The living count the dead, Indian Express, December 28, 2004.
• Rajeev P.I., "Can't you smell it? Fish doesn't smell this way," Indian Express, December 27, 2004.

From the Andamans, India:

• Subrata Nagchoudhury, ?000 dead in Andamans, blame the question mark on geography, Indian Express, December 28, 2004.
• Geeta Pandey, Eyewitness: Andaman tragedy, BBC News, December 27, 2004.
• Amitav Ghosh, Overlapping faults, The Hindu, January 11, 2005.
• Amitav Ghosh, No aid needed, The Hindu, January 12, 2005.
• Amitav Ghosh, The town by the sea, The Hindu, January 13, 2005.

From the Maldives:

• Shockwaves in Maldives, see The house is shaking, December 30, 2004 and 79 islands without safe drinking water, January 6, 2005.
• The Dhivehi Observer's archives holds reports compiled in the first week after the disaster that recapture the anxiety of those days, beginning with December 26 as Day 1:
  
  

  Day 1	Day 2	Day 3	Day 4
  Day 5	Days 6-8	Days 9-10	Day 11-12

From Sri Lanka:

• Robert Marquand, For Sri Lanka, a 'ground zero,' Christian Science Monitor, January 4, 2005.
• VII Photo, Tsunami -- Sri Lanka, a photo essay.

Footnote

Renuka Narayanan, The old man and the sea, Indian Express, December 30, 2004

Resources

The idea of a page of links to resources on the tsunami and post-tsunami reconstruction are hardly new. Here we link some of the more useful portals we found, and also a selection of important news resources from areas affected by the tsunami.

Tsunami-related portals

• Dr. Matthew Ciolek's 2004 Tsunami Disaster - Scholarly and Factual Analyses page (part of the Asian Studies WWW Virtual Library).
• ReliefWeb, South Asia: Earthquake and Tsunami--December 2004.
• NIASLINC, Asia Insights: Tsunami Disaster.
• Overseas Development Institute, The Indian Ocean Tsunami Crisis.
• Development Gateway, South Asian Tsunami.
• Maldives Tsunami Disaster Special
• BBC World Service, In Depth: Tsunami Disaster.

• The Tsunami Disaster and the Globalization of Relief, Forum, Center for Global Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, February 1, 2005. The site containts streaming video links and powerpoint versions of the presentations made.

Media resources