TSUNAMI - SRI LANKA FIRST-HAND REPORT On Monday we visited the Mount Royal Hotel on the beach at Mount Lavinia where many of you and other friends stay and we walked the length of the beach. The wall between the Hotel's garden and pool and the railway line and the beach was flattened and the garden, pool and ground-floor rooms filled with mud and debris. On the beach nearly everything was flattened with only one restaurant left standing although damaged: otherwise nothing is left except debris. But debris the likes of which I've never seen. Not a whole roof or an entire brick and concrete wall but tiny unrecognisable pieces as the swirling waters smashed everything into smithereens. All this mixed with weeds, plastic and other rubbish. There remains nothing to salvage: only to bulldoze, clear and throw into rubbish dumps. Nothing left with which to rebuild. On Tuesday we ventured a little further afield to where the road south begins and runs from Moratuwa to Panadura. Between it and the sea is the main railway line south to Gall and Matura filled with low cost housing and shacks of fisherman primarily. What was left? Nothing!! On both sides of the road (which had been bulldozed clear by the Army) nothing but tiny bits of splintered wood, tiny sheets of asbestos and a few bricks remaining concreted together, all draped in plastic vegetation etc. and piled metres high against buildings or posts that withstood the forces as the waters three times rushed in. First at a few metres high then as it receded showing a bare sea bed never seen before (and onto which an adventurous few went to collect fish left dieing on the bared sea bed) only to return 15 to 20 metres (not feet!!) high and then recede and return again. In 30 minutes it was all over! All on a beautiful early morning with a clear blue sky cooled by the cooling Christmas breezes that blow at this time of year. On the Wednesday I'd contacted some friends in Galle, 78 miles south who were inland and safe but short of food etc. We decided to venture down south, although the main Galle Road was uncleared, by driving on narrow minor country roads that meander inland from village to village and connect them and inland towns with those on the coast. Using a map and with excellent emergency signing put up by a Soya Bean company we drove through some beautiful scenery where we'd never visited before and arrived to find the family safe. After distributing the food we'd brought we ventured into Galle. If you've been watching TV you will have seen the main Galle Central Bus Stand and the International Cricket Stadium under water with three girls being swept away as they failed to hold on to the bus stand. At first driving into the town all looks OK until there tell-tale piles of rubbish in drains and in gardens. Then it gets progressively worse as walls are washed away, then vehicles are plastered against houses and trees, then boats appear in gardens and houses and then there is nothing except this incredible debris where it is possible to recognise what had been a chair or a plastic bucket or a sink or a toilet until even these are so destroyed that nothing in the piles of debris can be recognized. This rubbish sometimes is metres high. It all stinks with that sweet smell of death and decaying bodies - by this stage rarely a few human mainly but dogs, cats, goats etc. Galle had been particularly severely hit with the three waves each forced into two as the 16th century fort ramparts withstood the waves (inside it is scarcely damaged) and the floods were funneled into a small space opposite the railway station and directed down a canal into the centre of the town and carrying everything before it including the corber of an old Dutch building....