Reply #28: isn't it all part of the same story? and more than 1 train tradegy... [View All]

[bpilgrim]

certainly helps to bring the scale of the tradegdy and destruction to light and we still don't know all of the 'story' yet.

:cry:

Tuesday, December 28, 2004 · Last updated 1:22 p.m. PT

Summary: Sri Lanka tsunami train victims

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

QUEEN OF THE SEA: Sri Lanka officials say 1,000 tickets were sold for an excursion Sunday from the capital, Colombo, to beach resorts on the train known as "Samudradevi," or "Queen of the Sea."

TRAGEDY STRIKES: The train was swept off the track by Sunday's tsunami.

AFTERMATH: More than 800 people were killed; no relatives claimed 204 of the bodies, so they were buried in a mass grave along the railway line. "This was the only thing we could do," said Venerable Baddegama Samitha, a Buddhist monk and former parliamentarian. "The bodies were rotting. We gave them a decent burial."

more...
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apasia_story.asp?category=1104&slug=Quake%20Train%20Summary%20Box

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Tuesday, December 28, 2004 · Last updated 1:22 p.m. PT

In Sri Lanka, Twin Train Wreck Devastates Area

By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 28, 2004; 12:45 PM

GALLE, Sri Lanka, Dec. 28--The tsunami slammed into two trains that had come to a halt on the outskirts of a tiny fishing village near here, hurling a dozen of its cars across the countryside into coconut groves, fields and flimsy huts.

With a death toll already estimated at around 1,500, the twin train wreck in Hikkaduwa, about 12 miles northwest of Galle, appears to have been the single most destructive incident in a country that bore the brunt of the tsunami that swept across the Indian Ocean on Sunday. Two and a half days after the disaster, authorities were still pulling bodies from the twisted wreckage of the carriages, some of which ended up half a mile from the railway line.

"There were very few survivors," said Gunasena Hewavitharana, the chief government representative in this southern port city, after touring the accident site by helicopter, the only means of access. In addition to directing relief efforts in Galle, Hewavitharana is also looking for his sister and niece who were on board the 7:15 a.m. express from Colombo when it was derailed by the water 12 miles west of here. The train was named Samudradevi, or Queen of the Sea.

more...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31175-2004Dec28.html

unless you were refering to another 'story'

peace