It’s a busy day at the Ambalangoda train station. The No. 50 Matara Express,
meaning Queen of the Sea, has just pulled up to the platform fully loaded with passengers.
The eight-carriage train carries around 1,700 passengers traveling from Sri Lanka’s largest
city of Colombo to the city of Galle on the south of the island. It is Sunday, December 26, 2004,
Boxing Day. For most passengers, however, today is Poya Day, a Buddhist holiday celebrating the
full moon. Many use the opportunity to travel down south to some of the country’s beautiful resorts.
The train is so packed that the doors can’t be opened.
Station personnel is on the platform helping passengers board the train.
Keeping up with the schedule is not something Sri Lanka Railways is famous for,
but the staff is trying their best to see off the train as soon as possible.
Busy with the job, no one hears the phone that keeps ringing inside the station office.
A couple of minutes later, all passengers are boarded, and the journey continues.
Seven miles {11km} south of Ambalangoda, the train is forced to stop - it is surrounded by water.
The unanswered call from earlier was the main dispatching office, warning of an approaching
tsunami. The devastating wave was caused by an undersea 9.3 megathrust earthquake northwest of
the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. The tsunami eventually struck the coasts of Indonesia,
Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, the Maldives, and even the distant African country of Somalia.
Unfortunately, the ‘Queen of the Sea’ engineer didn’t receive the warning on time, and the train
is now stuck on tracks in the small village of Peraliya. Here, the railway runs only 220
yards {200m} from the coastline. The first tsunami wave had already flooded the area even though it
wasn't as bad as what was to come. The train can’t continue the journey, nor can it go back.
The passengers are confused and unaware of the impending danger. Then, the second wave hits the
coast. A torrent of seawater breaches through the palm trees and slams the train. It starts flooding
the densely packed carriages. Passengers inside begin to panic as the water level increases with
each second, reaching their necks. It’s complete chaos inside. People are trying to leave the
carriage in any way they can. Many of them are trying to reach the roof, above the water line.
Villagers from Peraliya also rush to climb the train in hopes of escaping the incoming water.
Then the water level suddenly drops as the sea begins to recede. It brings a sigh of relief,
but only to those that have never witnessed a tsunami. The residing water is nothing
more than an indicator of an incoming wave that sucks up the water before it strikes.
Ten minutes later, the third and largest wave arrives. A wall of water covering most of the
horizon rumbles toward the train. People inside and on top of the carraiges watch the incoming
wave with horror as it swallows everything in its path. There’s absolutely nothing they can do.
This tsunami is one of the most devastating disasters in history.
At first, about two hours after the earthquake, a small flood inundated the southeastern coast
of Sri Lanka. The subsequent tsunami hit the coast facing the epicenter first.
Moments later, the water receded, exposing the sea floor as far as 1,000 yards from the coastline.
The wave then refracted around Dondra Head, the island's southernmost tip,
and struck the southwestern coast. Even though it is on the other side of the island,
this area suffered heavy destruction. The tsunami carried away everything in front of it,
flattening trees, houses, and entire villages. The village of Peraliya, just 200 yards away
from the sea, was hit by the first wave at 09:30 A.M. The water inundated the town
and raised the alarm among its inhabitants. Many of them rushed toward the train, looking
for safety on top of it. Others hid behind the carriages, believing the weight of the train would
be enough to withhold the force of the tsunami. As it hit, passengers inside the train were still
confused about what was going on. It was only the second wave that threw them into a panic.
The water breached into the compartments filling them up to the passengers' necks.
The lack of space inside the train overflowing with passengers made things even more difficult.
People started to push each other as they tried to reach the exit. With 1,700 passengers in only
eight carriages, it was impossible to get out. The third wave was fatal. According to
post-tragedy assessments, the wave was up to 29 feet tall, 9 feet above the top of the train. It
was so powerful that it pushed the engine and the carriages off the track and smashed them
against the nearby houses. The villagers who were hiding behind the train were killed on the spot.
The wave carried the train like a toy. Once the water receded, the rescuers found the engine
100 yards away from the tracks. The agony of those inside the train
didn't last long. The wave simply swallowed them. Confined in the submerged train,
they had zero chance of surviving. Everything was over in just a couple
of minutes. In place of a village, there was now a sea of dead bodies, baggage,
trees, and building debris. Ninety-nine percent of the Peraliya population was killed,
and almost all of the passengers aboard the “Queen of Sea.” Only a couple of passengers and
a train conductor, who stood on top of the train when the third wave hit, survived the wreck.
The authorities knew nothing about the train’s location at the moment of the tsunami impact,
let alone its ill fate. Later that day, an army helicopter spotted the floating train, but it took
an entire day for emergency teams to reach the scene. The whole region suffered a cataclysm.
The “Boxing Day Tsunami” had a devastating effect, claiming around 228,000 lives, nearly 170,000
in Indonesia. Sri Lanka was second to that, with 36,000 people losing their lives in the flooding.
The local emergency service was dispersed throughout the area,
rescuing people and removing dead bodies. Within a week, the military and the emergency teams
had begun an organized cleanup of the scene. They managed to recover only 900 bodies from the scene.
The rest were either taken by family members to be buried or were washed out to sea.
From Peraliya, bodies were taken to a hospital in the town of Batapola,
where they were packed in rows on the hospital’s forecourt. The identification of the victims was
extremely difficult, and in the end, about 200 people remained either unidentified or there was
no one to collect their bodies. They were buried in a Buddhist ceremony in a mass cemetery near
the place where the tsunami hit the train. The cleanup operation was finished in 2005,
with the entire area cleared of debris and the train removed from the scene.
A part of the train wreck was displayed at the Community Tsunami Museum opened in Peraliya.
The engine, however, was completely restored and put back into service
on the Colombo - Galle railway line. In memory of the tragic events it experienced,
a wave motif was painted on its side. Train conductor Wanigaratne Karunatilleke,
who survived the tsunami, returned to his job on the line where on Boxing Day 2004,
he almost lost his life in the greatest railway disaster in the history of the world.
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