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Indian islanders search for loved ones on radio

PORT BLAIR: With phones down, boat links cut and the number of missing people dwarfing the death toll, tsunami survivors on India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands have only one hope for tracing relatives - the radio.

Airwaves in the remote islands are jammed as hundreds of anxious islanders have flocked to the office of state-run All India Radio with handwritten questions about the fate of their loved ones, many of which are still cut off from the world after the Dec. 26 tsunami. “I am very concerned about you, I promise you, I will take the first boat and fetch you,” reads a message from schoolboy P. Uday Bhanu to his father who was in the Hut Bay islet in the south of the archipelago when disaster struck.

Another went out from a Catholic priest, listing the names of each of his family members on Car Nicobar island, which took the brunt of the waves, and urging them to somehow get out and reach Port Blair, the island’s capital. Nine days after the tsunami, there is still no clear number for the number of the people who have died on this remote cluster of more than 550 islands, of which only three dozen are inhabited.

Almost all the islands can only be reached by sea, but the giant waves destroyed most jetties, leaving many people stranded.

Rescue teams have so far found 900 bodies in the rubble of buildings, in the thick forests and in fissures in the ground. But 5,700 people are listed as “missing”.

The tsunami, triggered by an undersea earthquake off Indonesia, just south of the Nicobar islands, has killed nearly 150,000 people across south and southeast Asia. The toll includes 15,160 people dead or presumed dead in India. Indian officials say they cannot confirm whether the missing are dead until bodies are found or they are accounted for by a village headman or locals who survived the waves.

“We have to be sure about these things, how can you say somebody is dead when you cannot land on the island, cannot speak to anyone there,” said P. Vaidyanathan, a clerk in the local electricity department.

Vaidyanathan came to the radio station to send a message to his 18-year-old nephew on Nancowry island. He has not heard from hin since the tsunami and wants to tell him to hang in there, because a boat will be coming in the next two days.

There is no way of knowing if Vaidyanathan’s nephew will hear his name on the airwaves, and he can’t respond. But there is no stopping the stream of people at the radio station from trying to reach out to their families. Many others call in with messages over the few phone lines that work.

“Even in normal circumstances, the radio is critical to islanders to know about ship movements, weather, etc,” said K.D Shukla, a programme officer at All India Radio. “But today it is the lifeline, the only link to the outlying islands.” reuters

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