The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Hell breaks loose in tourist paradise

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Dec 27, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Hell breaks loose in tourist paradise

By A. Saye Sekhar

MANGINAPUDI BEACH, DEC.26. The full moon day of "Margasira maasam,'' considered auspicious, proved to be nightmarish for scores of those who went in the early hours to the seashore to have a holy dip on Sunday.

While 26 bodies were recovered and identified by the Krishna district administration, people at the beach felt that many more could have been washed away.

Though complaints about missing persons were not made officially, hearsay reports suggested that many of those who thronged the beach in the morning were not to be seen anywhere after the tragedy struck.

As people were having fun in the seawaters, a sudden gush of water engulfed the area with great force.

Eerie silence

As sepulchral silence was reigning supreme on the shore of the furious Bay of Bengal, the otherwise active beach -- which is being developed into a tourist resort -- presented a gloomy scene.

A few pushcarts, that used to be kept on the beach for selling snacks to the visiting tourists, were thrown to a very long distance and lay mutilated.

Eyewitnesses told The Hindu that a lorry, in which some 100 tourists came for a holy dip from the Ponnur area in Guntur district, was found afloat for a while on the surging waters. Later, it got stuck in the slush. Same was the case with a Toyota Qualis which was also found stranded in the muddy sands.

Missing persons

What makes the story of missing persons tricky was that none of those who had thronged the beach in these two vehicles was seen either at the hospital or on the shore. Some of the survivors, who were obviously dazed following the deluge, said over 50 of those who came in the lorry were reportedly missing.

The story of fishermen, who were reported missing, was even more pathetic. There is no one to report if any of them is missing, but rumours did the rounds that many fishermen ventured into the sea early in the morning.

Water is said to have risen to a little over two metres and came gushing on to the landmass to a distance of over two km. The tourist resorts built on the beach were ravaged by the water.

At around 2 p.m., even as the Minister for Municipal Administration, Koneru Ranga Rao, and the District Collector, K. Prabhakara Reddy, were standing on a mound of mud near the shore supervising the search operations and several onlookers were trying to find their way towards the beach, a tidal wave was seen approaching the coast.

Except for the two dignitaries and their staff, all others took to their heels.

While an eerie silence gripped Manginapudi, the secluded lovers' paradise, the roar of the waves kept on haunting the people of the district headquarters town of Machilipatnam.

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