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Tsunami - one year on
Madhavan lost 10 family members to the waves, but is working hard to speed the recovery of his deeply traumatised community

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Madhavan
Age: 35
Home: Tharangampadi, Nagapattinam District, Tamil Nadu, India
When the tsunami struck the coast of boatyard manager Madhavan’s South Indian town, he was 1.5km away, washing clothes in a pond. The fact that it was a Sunday - not a work day - saved his life but he lost many members of his family. They and hundreds of others, including women and children selling fish on the beach, were killed by the ferocious waves.

Madhavan and his fellow workers at the boatyard sprang back into action as soon as they could, to help repair boats and nets and try to get the community of Tharangampadi back onto its feet.
Filed in: Asia, Climate Change

Tamil Nadu and the waves

The Nagapattinam District was badly affected by the tsunami, but the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu as a whole was spared the worst devastation on the Indian mainland: the landmass of Sri Lanka shielded the state from the waves to a certain extent
Nevertheless, in Madhavan’s home town of Tharangampadi alone, 525 people were killed and thousands more were made homeless
80% of victims on the Indian mainland were fishermen. Those that survived had their livelihood destroyed as the tsunami swept away and destroyed boats, nets and the infrastructure of the fishing industry
Farmers suffered too. 20,000 hectares of Tamil Nadu’s agricultural coastal land was inundated; many farmers have lost the only paddy crop they are able to grow in an entire year and fear that the salt water may have rendered the land uncultivable forever

Filed in: Asia, Climate Change

India

The tsunami in numbers
total death toll: 250,000 + (December 2005)
death toll in Tamil Nadu state: 7,951
$ pledged to date: 7 billion (approx.)