Entire Indian airforce station pushed off the map by Tsunami

Entire IAF station pushed off the map in Car Nicobar Tuesday December 28 2004 00:00 IST

CAR NICOBAR ISLANDS: The day after, the sea here almost mocks in its ordinariness. The sun blazing, when you look down from the AN-32 on its way to Car Nicobar from Port Blair, there are just tiny white flecks on the calm Bay of Bengal. If you don't search for land, it's as if yesterday didn't happen.

But once you land, you know why this is where an estimated 2,000 are feared dead, this is where once an Indian Air Force Base was.

The base has been pushed off the map by the sea and along with it, have perished over 100 officers and IAF personnel - of the total base strength of 1700. The entire coastline is strewn with trees that snapped like twigs. Those people who survived are so traumatised that even the slightest movement of wind or wave makes them run out into the open from the Air Force station hangars and other installations which are doubling up as shelters.

This was a plum posting, says Group Captain and Station Commander V Bandopadhyaya. ``The officers and men wanted to stay here, wilfully.'' Because the picture-postcard Air Force colony was drawn along the coastline, dotted with elegant two-storeyed bungalows. The sea was barely 200 m away, the front yard almost a private beach.

Most of those houses have been flattened. In many spots, even debris is missing, the house swallowed up whole.

Standing, then staggering on the debris, Captain P Maheshwar counts himself lucky - he lost everything but has his wife and child.

``The night before, we had a Christmas party and when the earthquake hit early in the morning, people were scared but we all took it in the right spirit. Every family rushed out of their homes and began to assemble together. One of us even began filming the chaos on his handycam saying it will be precious visual evidence for posterity. Suddenly, I saw the water level rise and that officer (the one with the handycam) vanished.''

Captain Maheshwar stops, his eyes lock on a metal frame stuck on a tree branch about 20 feet from the ground. ``That looks like my refrigerator,'' he says, under his breath. ``The skeleton of my car is lying there,'' he points. ``Every belonging of my 12 years of married life has been wiped out.'' Except, his family, of course, which Maheshwar says he can't explain other than saying it must be a miracle.

Not for six officers and their families, including several squadron leaders, the Met officer and the doctor of the Air Force station - all among the 102 that have been killed.

The waves hammered the coast for over two hours and once the water receded, the bodies of 23 IAF personnel were found strewn on the tarmac. Two more were retrieved from the debris, another 77 believed to have been sucked into the sea by the retreating waves.

The tarmac was the safe haven here. Being the highest point in the station. It stuck out, eyewitnesses said, amid the waves like the ``back of a giant tortoise in the sea.'' Most of those who could clamber onto it were saved.

The Mi-8 choppers were safe but the top floor of the three-storeyed Air Traffic Control was sliced off from the main structure, so neatly that it looks as if a giant crane ripped off the top floor and neatly placed it at a distance.

The neighbouring village of Malacca has been wiped out, most of the other half a dozen villages here are still inaccessible. This was why the toll could rise alarmingly, Lt Governor Ram Kapse told visiting Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Sonia Gandhi when they arrived here on Monday afternoon.

Commander in Chief B S Thakur said that several sorties were carried out right through the day with over 430 people being evacuated from Car Nicobar. About 70 of them were brought to the Naval Hospital in Port Blair.

The importance of Car Nicobar base, which is the operational heart of the Andamans and Nicobar Command, lies in its location. It sits on the mouth of strategic Malacca Straits, which accounts for 52 per cent of world cargo and is the second-most busy shipping lane in the world. More than 114 supertankers carrying 9.5 billion oil barrels for South Asian markets traverse through this 10 degree channel route that bisects the Andamans Islands and the Great Nicobar Island.

Besides handling the reconnaissance and surveillance activities, the Car Nicobar base has a major role in tracking down gun-runners and narco-traffickers that push in arms and drugs to India's north-east through the Cox's bazaar and Chittagong route in Bangladesh.

The runway of Car Nicobar base was extended to handle fighter operations in 2001 after the government cleared the Andamans and Nicobar Tri-Service Command. Since then, the IAF was conducting fighter exercises involving Jaguars and Su-30s twice a year so that it would be ready in case India wanted to project force in the Indian Ocean.

Apart from the Car Nicobar base, the Indian Navy has 12 amphibious landing ships and fast attack crafts at the Port Blair harbour. Top Navy officials said that none of the ships were damaged in the tsunami as they were pushed to mid-stream the moment the first wave came and hit Port Blair. The state-of-the-art Thomson CSF radar that monitors traffic north of Landfall Islands is safe but the building housing the equipment has developed cracks.

While tragic enough,the deathtoll would have been much worse,if the facility in the Andamans was fully operational.The Indian military last year opened a tri-services command in the Andamans to protect Indian interests across the Malacca straits & deter Chinese military activity.The command is still in the process of being operationalise.A particularly poignant story told on various Indian news Channels was of an Indian Army major who clung onto his 2 little children as their house was being flooded.He consumed a lot of seawater in the process & just when he thought they would be safe,he passed out.When he awoke,he realised he had lost both his children.Some Indian government officials estimate the death toll at Car Nicobar to reach 10,000 which would mean 1 in every 3 persons on the island would be dead.

Seems to me that too many folks are not familiar with something called 'radios', or 'radio communications'.

Oh well... Before I get flamed for being insensitive, my Dad had a weather alert radio twenty years ago when he was living in FL. NOAA and the USGS would issue warnings. I'm certain that we did this 12/25/04 to those at risk in the South Pacific.

My sympathy to the people of India, and most particularly in this case to those serving in the IAF and the families of those who have lost their lives.

How terrible. I am going to make a contribution to Caritas India through Catholic Relief Services (right now their contribution site is not responding - I hope because there have been too many people wanting to donate money). They are going to do work with water purification and health care, which is going to be a significant problem in the aftermath of this.

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