Sri Lanka wakes up to catastrophe
Lalith Weeratunga, Sri Lanka's top relief co-ordinator, said officials had also failed to learn from floods in June last year that ravaged the country's south and claimed hundreds of lives.
"We had been very complacent," Weeratunga told AFP. "People had been predicting earth quakes, tidal waves and we even felt a few tremors recently, but obviously we did not take the warnings seriously."
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Until Sunday's unprecedented destruction, the worst natural disaster had been last June's river flooding and mudslides which left 255 dead.
"Even after that, we had not learnt a lesson," said Weeratunga, a senior civil servant who is also the prime minister's top aide. "We have to rethink the entire disaster preparedness strategy."
However, he said with the government declaring a "state of disaster" the military was pressed into the rescue operation which had now turned into a recovery effort to look for bodies of victims.
The police chief in the island's southern district of Matara, Chandana Wickremaratne, said,"The worst of it is that a large number of children were killed," Wickremaratne said. "Some had no time to get out of their homes. It was sudden. Very, very sudden."
Police Inspector General Chandra Fernando said he sent 500 additional officers to the coastal areas to help with formalities in releasing the thousands of bodies piling up in rural hospitals.
However, the railway line to the south was washed away in several places making it impossible to resume train services any time soon, transport ministry officials said.
"An entire train was submerged and we don't know the exact casualties there," an official said.
Hundreds of cars and busses were seen floating in the towns of Galle and Matara and along a 100-kilometre stretch of the coast-hugging Galle Road which is also known as A-2.
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