2004-12-30 09:42:00

Sitting on the tube yesterday reading the Metro as is my want and find on page three that the hotel I was staying in exactly this time last year was one of the worst hit by the tsunami waves. Thought I’d share the photos, looks like my room is now under water!

The most memorable feature of the hotel was the set of women who stood at the beachfront selling sarongs, Dad took quite a few photos of them last year (see the Sri Lanka 2003 gallery). They were mentioned in the news story too:

One witness reported: “Somebody said they saw the girl who sold sarongs frantically trying to save her sarongs after the first wave – because they were her livelihood – only to be swept away in the second”.

The hotel pictured before the disaster.
Guests start running towards the hotel as the wave starts to hit.	Water gushes above the level of the first storey of the building and reaches the green roof of the pool bar.
Another huge wave punds in, flooding the storey of the hotel and engulfing the green roof.	The sea pulls back, leaving bare sand.