Thiruvananthapuram (AsiaNews/Ucan) - Thousands of people spent the night of March 28 praying in churches across coastal areas of southern India, amid fears of another tsunami.
The federal and state governments had issued warnings that evening, following media reports of an earthquake measuring 8.7 on the Richter scale off the western coast of Sumatra, in western Indonesia.
Panic gripped people in the southern Indian coast because reports said the epicentre of the latest quake was near that of the Dec. 26 quake that generated massive tsunamis. Those waves killed almost 300,000 people around the Indian Ocean region. India was among the four worst-hit countries.
"The whole coastal belt spent their night praying. Thank God we are safe," Bishop Stanley Roman of Quilon said on the morning of March 29. Hundreds of families joined nightlong prayers in churches along the shores, the prelate said.
After Indian TV channels flashed news of the Indonesian quake at around 10 p.m. local time, children and women joined the prayers in the Thankassery coastal area, Kerala state, where the Quilon bishop's house is located. The earlier tsunami had spared Thankassery, 2,760 kilometres south of New Delhi.
Women lit candles before the statue of the Blessed Mother. "Now they have returned to their homes," Bishop Roman said. The Dec. 26 tsunami killed some 180 people in Azheeckal, 20 kilometers to the north but still in the diocesan territory.
People in coastal areas of neighbouring Tamil Nadu state, the site of most of the Indian deaths from the Dec. 26 tsunami, moved to safer places. Some also spent the night in prayer in churches.
"Our people fled from their homes and children started crying. We all moved out to safer places," said Father Xavier Lawrence, parish priest of St. Alex's Church in Kottilapad. "Now we are all back. But people are scared to stay near the coast," the priest told UCA News. Official records list 577 people killed in the state's Colachel and Kottilapad coastal areas in the December disaster.
However, T.K. Jose, a senior bureaucrat in Kerala who monitored tsunami relief operations in the state, pointed out that the situation was quite different this time. "Now everybody knows what a tsunami is. Last time even the government officials were not familiar with tsunamis or their impact," he said.
Father Stanley Sahayasheelan, parish priest in Colachel, agreed. After the news of the quake, the administration of Kanniyakumari district "ordered evacuation of families to safer places," he said. "Police swung into action. All hospitals in the areas were alerted. Last time there was nothing. We paid for our ignorance," the priest continued. Colachel suffered heavy human losses because children and women "tried to collect fish when the sea receded 500 meters just before the tsunami." The priest explained that the people did not know then that the sea recedes ahead of a tsunami's arrival.
Archbishop Maria Calist Soosa Pakiam of Trivandrum spoke with Kerala Chief Minister Oomman Chandy late at night to seek government help to bring back fishermen who had gone to sea. Chandy held an urgent meeting with the state's Crisis Management Group that night and made arrangements to track down the fishermen and bring them back safely.
However, by March 29, officials withdrew the warnings as no tsunami was reported even five hours after the quake. Although no unusual sea activity has been reported, the federal government asked coastal states, as well as the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Territory in the Indian Ocean, to remain vigilant.
