Cels, Jonas; Rossetto, Tiziana; Little, Angela; Dias, Priyan; (2022) Tsunami preparedness of coastal Sri Lankan schools. In: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Natural Hazards & Infrastructure. National Technical University of Athens: Athens, Greece.

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Abstract

Over 230,000 people across the Indian Ocean lost their lives on December 26th , 2004, as the Boxing Day tsunami swept away entire coastal communities (Pomonis et al., 2006; Rossetto et al., 2007). The tsunami claimed 35,000 victims in Sri Lanka and inflicted a catastrophic blow to the education system. Overall, the tsunami affected over 200,000 students and 3,000 teachers. It destroyed and damaged 182 schools, and affected a further 287 schools, which served as temporary shelters for the hundreds of thousands made homeless (Bitter & Edirisinghe, 2013; The Education Rehabilitation Monitor, 2009). There remains a risk of another tsunamigenic earthquake either along the Sunda Arc, from Northern Andaman to Southern Sumatra, or along the Arakan and Makran seismic zones propagating a tsunami onto Sri Lankan shores (J. Wijetunge, 2010). The question for the highly exposed schools along the Sri Lankan coast is thus – are they prepared for such an eventuality? This paper uses insights from 25 semi-structured interviews with school principals to evaluate whether Sri Lankan schools are better prepared for a tsunami now than in 2004. The interviews reveal that several key measures have been adopted since 2004 but that fundamental gaps in school tsunami preparedness persist. As expressed by the school principals, an oncoming tsunami is the threat they are least prepared for.

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