The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : `Waves would have caused instantaneous deaths'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 29, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

`Waves would have caused instantaneous deaths'

By K.T. Sangameswaran

CHENNAI, DEC. 28. Most of the deaths in Sunday's tsunami attack along the coast would have been almost instantaneous, says a forensic medicine expert.

The huge waves would have struck the victims with "disbelief and shock." They would have been immobilised, swept off their feet and submerged in water. Gasping for breath, they would have swallowed sand and mud along with seawater, which would have blocked the respiratory passage, says K. Mathiharan, adviser, Institute of Legal Medicine and former Assistant Professor of Forensic Medicine, Madras Medical College.

Air replacement

When a person drowns, oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange during respiration will be blocked.

When a man in perfect possession of his senses falls into water, he will sink to a depth commensurate with the momentum obtained during the fall; he immediately rises to the surface with the buoyancy of the body, clothes and struggling limb movements.

If he is not a swimmer, he will cry for help. As his mouth is at the water surface, he draws water into the stomach and lungs.

Water in the lungs excites coughing and in violent expiratory efforts due to cough, a certain amount of air is expelled from the lungs and its place is taken up by water. Thus, the weight of the body increases and the man sinks.

He rises again to the surface by an involuntary movement of his limbs, draws more water into the lungs and consequently is drowned. The rising and sinking alternately will go on until all air in the lungs is replaced with water.

The man then loses consciousness and sinks to the bottom to die.

The mechanism of death in acute drowning is "irreversible cerebral anoxia" (absence of oxygen).

In several cases, the clothes of the victims would go missing in the speed of the retreating waves.

Children more vulnerable

In a tsunami situation, women and children would have been more vulnerable than men due to their physical condition, Dr. Mathiharan told The Hindu .

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu

News Update

Stories in this Section