Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
13
CHAPTER
The Humanized Environment
Field Note
Disaster along Indian Ocean Shores
80
°
E
Bay of
Bengal
INDIA
Laccadive
Sea
SRI
LANKA
Galle
INDIAN
OCEAN
Figure 13.1
Galle, Sri Lanka.
The December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami destroyed this passenger train
in Sri Lanka, ripping apart tracks and killing more than a thousand people.
© AP/Wide World Photos.
Watching the horrors of the tsunami of December 26, 2004 unfold on screen
(Fig. 13.1), I found it quite eerie to see such devastation in places where earlier I
walked and drove and rode—like that Sri Lankan train on which I took a group of
students in 1978 including my own children—now smashed by the waves, the car-
riages toppled, killing more than a thousand passengers, some of them tourists. And
the beaches near Phuket in Thailand, so serene and beautiful in memory, now proved
a fatal attraction leading to disaster for thousands more, tourists and workers alike.
I went online to follow the events of that day and those that followed, horrifi ed
by the rising death toll and by the images of destruction and devastation. The in-box
of my e-mail began to include messages from former students who remembered
my in-fi eld assessment of the tsunami risks in Southeast Asia. But I had not been
434
