Word: tsunami
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...When the tsunami hit the eastern Sri Lankan town of Thirukkovil, just before 9 a.m. on Dec. 26 last year, Father Ranjeevan Xavier cut short morning Mass at St. Joseph's, told his congregation to head for higher ground, tucked his cassock into his sash and ran toward the sea a few hundred meters away. "Almost immediately I found the body of a woman lying on a fence," says Father Ranjeevan, 30. "Her long hair had tangled in the barbed wire and trapped her. We'd had floods before, but I'd never seen that. I picked up her body...
Father Ranjeevan believes the tsunami brought good too. Aid flooded a poor area, the waves broke down divisions built by religion and a 22-year civil war, and disaster brought people closer to their gods. "The church is packed," he says, beaming, "and I'm building a new one to the south. The youth are with me. To feel closer to the sacrament, people have been leaving personal things--glasses, handkerchiefs--on the altar." Father Ranjeevan is unimpressed by the notion that that might have more to do with him than with his god. He tells the story...
Like many other Indonesians, Erwin has only one name. But he has been many things. He is unemployed, but before Dec. 26, 2004, he was a flower seller. Then the tsunami hit the Indonesian city of Banda Aceh, and for a moment Erwin became a hero. Trapped with hundreds of people seeking higher ground, he stood on the city's humpback bridge. Below him were thundering waves. "I stood there, staring helplessly at black water that looked more like heavy mud," he recalls. "It was filled with corpses, cars, dead animals and rubble from destroyed houses." Then he heard...
Near collapse, Erwin and the little girl were taken to a military hospital. He never saw her again. Later, Erwin discovered that his youngest son, 5, had perished in the tsunami. "I'm still haunted by the loss of my boy," he says. Meanwhile, Jack has lost his job too and can no longer afford to own a cell phone. Erwin is studying English to improve his chances of getting a job with an aid agency, but he isn't optimistic. "I do realize that I have to move on. But moving on is hard when you're not sure...
This was already a year that redefined generosity. Americans gave more money to tsunami relief, more than $1.6 billion, than to any overseas mission ever before. The Hurricane Season from Hell brought another outpouring of money and time and water bottles and socks and coats and offers of refuge, some $2.7 billion so far. The public failure of government to manage disaster became the political story of the year. But the private response of individuals, from every last lemonade stand to every mitten drive, is the human story...