| Monday, December 27, 2004
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (Reuters) -- The Maldives
declared a state of emergency on Sunday
after a tsunami wave deluged the remote
Indian Ocean island cluster and flooded
two thirds of the capital. More than 40
people were feared dead.
|
Last
year Maldives welcomed 500,000 tourist
to the country |
Seawater poured into the heavily built-up
streets of Male, forcing residents to wade
thigh-high to try and save their vehicles.
Many cars were swamped and unsalvagable.
The international airport was unusable.
Television footage showed Maldivians wading
through Male, picking up debris and garbage.
The government was unable to reach many
of the archipelago's more remote islands
because phone lines were down.
"The scale of the damage is such that
we have decided to declare a state of emergency,"
chief government spokesman Ahmed Shaheed
told Reuters by mobile telephone from Male.
"We are still unable to get through
to some of the people stranded in the islands."
None of the thousands of foreign visitors
holidaying in the country, a magnet for
honeymooners and well-heeled tourists from
around the globe, were believed to have
been killed although some had suffered minor
injuries, he added.
Maldives President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom
has spent much of his 26 years in power
warning of the dangers that global warming,
erosion and shifting weather patterns pose
to low-lying island nations like his own.
The chain of 1,200 tiny palm-fringed coral
islands dotted across 500 miles (800 km)
off the toe of India lies just a few feet
above sea level.
"The damage is considerable,"
Shaheed said. "(Male) is only about
three feet (one meter) above sea level and
a wave of water four feet (1.3 metres) high
swept over us."
The government was still trying to establish
communication with smaller islands where
many buildings, including houses, had been
flattened.
"There is damage on a very wide scale.
We are awaiting a full report but certainly
thousands are displaced," Shaheed said.
Male, which is 2 km (1.25 miles) long and
800 metres (half a mile) wide and home to
75,000 people, is bursting at the seams.
The island capital's streets of white-washed
houses are very cramped and areas of communal
open space sparse for residents -- so much
so that the government is building a brand
new island from scratch as an overflow.
Most of the Maldives 300,000 mostly Sunni
Muslim population are involved in the tourist
industry, the nation's economic backbone.
The Maldives' 200 inhabited islands are
home on average to just a few hundred people
or house luxury tourist resorts which offer
some of South Asia's most expensive holiday
accommodation.
Telecommunications were cut to many islands,
and Maldives radio broadcast prayers.
"It is a very bad situation. It is
terrible," Shaheed said after a tour
of Male.
"As you know it is the peak tourist
season... The whole of the Maldives is a
tourist area so we are just hoping and praying,"
he added.
He said the international airport, which
itself lies just a few feet above sea level
on an island of its own, was unusable.
The tsunami comes just days ahead of December
31 parliamentary elections. It was not immediately
clear if the elections would be delayed.
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