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Sebastian Lasse


20 years of trauma …

We met Chitravadivel Rajeswari in the General Hospital of Batticaloa.

The Tidal waves in Sri Lanka were up to 12 metres high and Chitravadivel survived them by climbing up a tree and clutching it for hours.
After the waves flooded the area she had just one goal: Helping in the hospital where she works as an assisting nurse.
Normally she would go by bike but now there was no bike, there was just water.

After 3 days we visited her again, she was totally exhausted. 💖 Chitravadivel did not spent a second to think about herself or her own property.
It was a very strange feeling but the only feeling I had at this minute was that anyone now needs a bit of time to care for themselves.
We tried to find her home which was a nice house. It was made out of stones and built by the best intentions of what a community can build.

This was the moment when we found the house.

🧵 …

Chitravadivel Rajeswari is a victim of the seaquake. She sits mourning on the foundations of her collapsed house on Baticaloa beach. Only some stones of the foundation are left in the sand. She sits on these stones holding the decorative stone which was once above the entrance. Chitravadivel is crying and holding her face. Anything around her is destroyed.
Dec 26, 2024, 08:32 AM·Public·Web
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Sebastian Lasse


I do not want to share the „heavy“ pictures again but some signs and moments of hope.

We looked at how the schools dealed with the catastrophy and saw the power of communities.
The survivors collected all of the wet learning materials and used the upper floor to dry these materials to reuse them.

While there was lots of room for children to speak about the experienced, the lessons continued in the free space to give habit back.

Volunteers of UNICEF spoke with the children but – much more important:

They brought material for kids to express creativity and let the bad feelings go to paper.
To beat the devil out of the brush …
It felt as if that helped.
🧵

Wet school books cover the whole floor of a classroom to dry. Schools have no money for new books and so these materials were reused then.
Teacher Priyanthi de Soyza is teaching again for the first time after the seaquake. The lessons are taking place outdoors because many classrooms at Hegalla Central College were destroyed in the disaster. Her students are partly sitting on stones in the djungle and learning maths.
Two young UNICEF volunteers are talking to refugees in a camps tent near Galle.
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Sebastian Lasse


Akurala Gunananda Himi was the only monk in the Akurala temple at the coast.
Together with community people he seeked shelter inside the temple during the tidal waves.
It saved lives.
Outside the temple, only mud and debris remains.
🧵

Akurala Gunananda Himi is a buddist monk. He sits on the destroyed foundations in front of the white Akurala temple. Anything outside is just mud between palm trees. The temple is underwashed.
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Sebastian Lasse


Meanwhile we have seen about half of the coast of Sri Lanka.
Half of that giant ring of destruction.

Then we meet Rajasingham Kandeepan.
His family is considered to be missed.
He sits in the debris with family photos.

The tea shop at the beach is completely destroyed.

🧵

Rajasingham Kandeepan.sits in the debris with family photos. The waves have left the house with a big hole and washed everything inside away.
Rajasingham Kandeepan.looks out the small destroyed tea shop near the beach.
The scene with destroyed huts at the East Coast of Sri Lanka. In the front a traditional drum and a teddybear.
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Sebastian Lasse


The volunteers of charities like british saraid.org (Search and Rescue Assistance in Disasters) stay after their S.A.R operations to rebuild schools or public buildings.

Later on this day, we drove back to Batticaloa …

🧵

Help arrived to rebuild the schools. A girl in the front of a destroyed school and health center runs to the village to tell it to the people.
A volunteer of british S.A.R.A.I.D. (Search and Rescue Assistance in Disasters) is fixing the roof tiles of a school at a beach while two others are working to fix the destroyed walls.
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Sebastian Lasse


On the way back, we pass some areas where we can only walk by the help of the army cause the locations of mines from the civil war period can only be predicted now.
We look into the eyes of very hungry wild dogs while the elephants stood reportedly on higher ground in a group close together.
Especially at the East Coast, large areas like around this collapsed Hindu temple were completely destroyed.

The only lesson I learned:
Whenever solid structures are destroyed – be it by a disaster, by fascists, by Elmo (or any) –
we need to rebuild.
Continuously rebuild.

The next day in Batticaloa we wanted to visit Chitravadivel again …

🧵

Collapsed orange yellow Hindu temple in the front with folded palm trees in the background.
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Sebastian Lasse


We looked at the community to ask for Chitravadivel and I was thankful for my agency, stern and some editorial colleagues in that moment…

Chitravadivel was not at the left foundations of her house and it took us a while until we saw her nearby.

It was just moments after she had found her bike.

The bike to go to the hospital.
To help and then to rebuild.
Again.

[end of the thread]

Chitravadivel Rajeswari found her bike in the passage from the beach to her house. She is happy because she can repair it to drive to the hospital.
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Sebastian Lasse

^ [all photos by me]

/ addendum:
Today we are merely building software (see pinned talk [EN] or Berlin Fediday Talk [DE]).
This includes patterns which can be helpful for disasters too – like federated geocoding, wikidata, wikibase and OSM integration.
If it feels like you can help or are interested, let me know.

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