The 2004 Asian tsunami is still considered one of the deadliest natural disasters in modern history. Julian Chellappah, the Country Director of Save the Children Sri Lanka since 2019, tells us in this blog how he lived the day the tsunami hit Sri Lanka nearly 20 years ago.
The 2004 tsunami was unlike anything I had ever experienced both on a personal and on a professional level. It wreaked havoc and upended the lives of children and their families across Asia and here in Sri Lanka in a profound way.
I was based in Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, when the tsunami struck. When I heard the news, I had to leave my team in Colombo to see whether our staff were safe because we had colleagues working across the country from coast to coast.
It was a holiday (the day after Christmas) and this was the biggest natural disaster Sri Lanka had ever seen. I don’t think we were prepared to deal with such a large humanitarian crisis at the time.
The tsunami triggered the largest disaster response in Save the Children’s history.
When we learnt that over 39,000 people were dead it was a huge shock for us – the pain of those families was unimaginable.
Around 15 % of those killed by the tsunami in Sri Lanka were children. More than 3,000 children in Sri Lanka lost a parent. Villages were also destroyed.
To add further complication, Sri Lanka was in the middle of a three-decade civil war as well, so it really was an appalling situation - a crisis on top of a crisis.
Getting the team together took longer than expected. Some areas were difficult to reach but at least the communications - the phone lines - seemed to work for us. The tsunami really helped us to establish the right protocols, communications and procedures.
It was the biggest operation that any of us had ever experienced, and it informed a lot of the work that we did afterwards.
The east of Sri Lanka was heavily hit by the tsunami. Thankfully, we didn’t have any staff killed but some of their relatives were injured or killed, and their houses were washed away. We had one colleague, Andrew, who had recently joined us. His house on the coast was destroyed, so much so that Andrew could hardly recognise his home or its surroundings. Andrew still works with us at Save the Children today.
It was a challenging time for everyone. More than 270,000 people were displaced and more than 1 million lived in poverty triggered by the conflict and the tsunami and the need for water, shelter and safety were high.
Our biggest challenge was taking care of children and reuniting them with their families. Children were scattered and they didn’t know where their parents were. It took Save the Children more than a month to trace some parents and reunite them with their children.
That gives you an idea of the scale of the challenge and the efforts. I believe around 20,000 children needed to be reunited with their parents at the time both because of the tsunami but also because some had been made homeless because of the civil war.
Save the Children created safe play and recreation facilities that benefitted some 88,000 children who were displaced, almost all of whom were affected by the tsunami. We also helped to establish child protection committees in 108 tsunami-affected villages and trained about 900 local government officials on child protection issues.
Doing humanitarian work in a conflict setting here in Sri Lanka has been the biggest challenge during my time at Save the Children. Convincing all parties in a conflict that aid workers need to get through and help those affected and that we need to make sure that children are being supported was often extremely difficult.
While children are never the instigators of war or conflict, but they often pay the biggest price.
We needed to make sure, especially after the tsunami, that we could negotiate access and convince all parties involved in the civil war that we needed to get through to help children in need.
Since the 2004 tsunami, in Sri Lanka, Save the Children has strengthened its humanitarian response by going beyond early warning systems to help communities prepare for future disasters. We work with local organisations to strengthen their ability to help communities respond, recover and rebuild when disasters strike.
My commitment to Save the Children has only grown stronger since the tsunami because I have seen first-hand how our work helps to rebuild children’s lives and how the legacy of our work continues even two decades after the devastating events of 2004.
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Julian Chellappah, Country Director, Sri Lanka Diinuja Raddella/ Save the Children
Julian Chellappah has been the Country Director of Save the Children Sri Lanka since 2019 and has dedicated 25 years to the movement. Throughout his career, Julian has led both humanitarian and development missions in Sri Lanka. He led Save the Children’s response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the civil conflict in Sri Lanka and the economic crisis in 2022. Julian has also led Save the Children‘s humanitarian response in Afghanistan.
Save the Children has been working in Sri Lanka since 1974, marking 50 years of work in the country in 2024, and has contributed to both humanitarian and development needs across the country, through strong engagements with government partners, Civil Society Organisations, and the private sector in the areas of Child Protection, Education, Health and Nutrition, Climate Change, Social Protection, Youth Economic Empowerment and Participation, Food Security and Livelihood, and Child Rights Governance.
