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Renuka and the Tsunami

At 6:28 am Sri Lankan time on December 26 of last year, Renuka Perera and her three-year-old son were sleeping peacefully; oblivious to the horror that would soon hit the South Asian island they were visiting.

The two Greater Vancouver residents were guests of Renuka's mother in Colombo, Sri Lanka's capital city on the mid-western side of the island.

"I had no idea there was an earthquake," the employment counsellor said of her experience that morning.

When the 9.3 earthquake hit near Sumatra in the Indian Ocean, Renuka and Saje were sleeping blissfully. After the previous evening's dinner out and late night Christmas celebration of December 25, the two were exhausted. Although people in Indonesia and Thailand reported feeling the quake, Renuka's casual inquiries later about whether anyone felt the quake turned up negative answers. The eight minutes the earth shook caused no trepidation among Sri Lankans.

As we now know, this was the calm before the tsunami. To the southeast, in the Indian Ocean, the thrust of water pushed upward by the earthquake began its journey propelling toward the island nation. But at this point, according to a BBC analysis, the surge in these deeper waters would have been barely noticeable: only an increase in the water level of 30 centimeters (12 inches). Still, this seemingly small amount was moving quickly at 800 kilometers (500 miles) an hour. Other waves headed in other directions, leaving Indonesian and Thai coastlines in ruin.

Back in Colombo, the visiting mother and son awoke late in the morning. They had stayed in a cousin's home near Renuka's mother's house. Casually, the duo strolled over to where Renuka's brother, mother and other family members were preparing breakfast. Renuka was ready for a cup of tea, as is Sri Lankan tradition. As she sipped the welcome brew, she chatted with her relatives. The atmosphere was light and festive. Her sister-in-law decided to turn on the television to catch a morning chanting program. However, it wasn't on. Instead, news dominated the airwaves; news that would hit them, and the rest of the world, with a force as strong as a tsunami.

"We were really shocked to hear that," said Renuka, "In Sri Lanka, we never have had, when I was growing up, we never have had any earthquakes or anything like that."

On the other side of the island, as many as six unrelenting walls of seawater had just slammed the Sri Lankan shoreline. CNN reported 14-meter (40-foot) waves hitting inland as far as a kilometer (0.6 miles) in the port city Trincomalee (northeastern Sri Lanka). The BBC reported the waves did not recede, but rather pounded the coastline with 100 billion tones of water.

Cities on the southwestern tip of the island fared as badly. The waves bent around the island, with the part closest to the shore slowing and the outer parts traveling at faster speeds, crushing coastal cities and devastating the area.

As the details of the disaster began to unfold, Renuka and her family stayed close to home to hear more of the horrifying news. That night, the country's government imposed a curfew. By the next day, many people were talking about going to the damaged areas. Renuka said her family, like so many others, began to search through their cupboards, particularly for supplies for babies and children, which would be collected and delivered to victims in the devastated area.

"The people helped each other a lot," Renuka said.

While she witnessed extremes in altruistic behaviour, she also cringed at the opportunism and greed depicted in television reports. Her heart ached for the orphaned children she watched on the screen, while at the same time her stomach turned at reports of thieves removing jewelry items from dead bodies. While her sister hired a van and prepared to deliver supplies, Renuka's mother issued a stern edict: she did not want the two visitors to visit the ravaged areas because of the young age of Saje.

While the family stayed clear of the east and the south, they did travel later in January to an "upcountry" area in the mountains of Sri Lanka's interior. Here, about a 100 miles from Colombo, Saje participated in a religious ceremony with Renuka's father. No difficulty plagued the travelers on this journey inland.

Similarly, while the country cancelled its regular New Year fireworks, Saje had a small taste of the country's event in his family's yard later in the month.

When Renuka and Saje left to return to Canada at the end of January, news reports were highlighting the possibility of another tsunami. Renuka's biggest fear was that another tsunami might come and would somehow hit the western side of the island, where her family lives. On the plane, she was praying that the tsunami terror would end with no additional aftershocks and waves, a hope that she continues to feel even a year after the terrible tsunami hit her native country.