MY FATHER'S ACCOUNT OF THE 1964 CHRISTMAS CYCLONE
My parents traveled by car through Europe and India in 1964 and arrived in Madras on Sunday, December 20th, sixty years ago. In the evening, Dad spoke in the Madras Pentecostal Assembly. They left the car by the church and set off by train on Monday towards the Pamban Island in southeast India, from where there was a ferry to Ceylon (Sri Lanka). They planned to reach the Gospel ship, Ebeneser, by Christmas Eve to celebrate Christmas with their sons, Samuel and Emmanuel. The Ebeneser was anchored in Kayts, near Jaffna.
Dad wrote of that experience:
On Tuesday at 1.30 p.m., we crossed the Pamban Bridge. Due to high water and gale winds, the bridge was under pressure. What if the bridge collapsed under the train? According to the regulations, trains should never use the bridge if the wind speed exceeds 40 km/h. The hurricane blew at 278 km/h!
The wind was even stronger when we arrived at Dhanushkodi station at 3 p.m. After customs formalities, we boarded a steamboat called "Goschen" that operated between India and Ceylon. The ship left 40 minutes late. Roughly 200 Ceylon passengers and tourists from Germany, England, and Sweden were on the ferry, traveling to Ceylon to celebrate Christmas. A few had their cars with them.
As the crew lifted the cars onto the ship, the wind and waves were so rough that the captain, whom I knew, said worried to me,
"Pray that this will succeed."
He feared the ship's heavy rocking would make lifting cars dangerous.
Passengers groaned with seasickness while sailing for about three hours. The dishes flew to the ship's dining room floor, and the hotplates came off their mounts. The staff said that they had not experienced such a storm before. But unfortunately, this was just the beginning of what was coming. As our ship approached the pier at Talaimannar, I heard the captain shout on the bridge:
"Oh, God, help me!"
Although both anchors were thrown into the sea in good time, the ship hit the dock with a loud rumble. The anchors didn't hold! Eventually, the crew secured the vessel to the pier with strong ropes, and Ceylon officials boarded it. A lengthy and time-consuming inspection of passports and papers began. The captain urged the customs and police authorities to speed up the formalities so that he could move his ship off the pier as the storm increased.
We were among the first to step from the rocking ship to the dock. We ran with our luggage onto a train in the rain, standing on the pier. We were soaking wet as our carriage was far, at the front of the train, right behind the locomotive.
When our train finally got permission to leave, the storm intensified. The wind howled with a tremendous roar, rocking our train!
Later, we met the ship’s engineer in Mannar, who told me what happened after our train left.
At the Talaimannar pier, the Goschen struggled in the clutches of huge waves. The crew did their best. The captain gave orders on the bridge that hardly anyone heard because of the storm's roar. The engines worked at full power, but the ship could not get off the dock. Then, an eight-meter-high tidal wave lifted the boat on the pier and threw it into the city street. That was the Goshen's last journey.
REVERSE!
Our train traveled about 25 km to the next station, Mannar. When we arrived at Mannar station, the locomotive driver was allowed to continue the journey. The train set off but stopped a few hundred meters away. The driver heard the frightening noise of the waves. But above the noise of the waves and the locomotive's diesel engine, he heard a loud voice telling him to reverse the train to the station platform shelter. When he didn't believe anyone was talking to him, the sound became so loud that the driver was startled. He reversed the train to Mannar station, not a minute too early. A massive tidal wave rumbled towards the station. It destroyed the rail embankment for ten kilometers, twisting the rails at an angle and leaving them hanging in every direction. The tidal wave destroyed the track all down the line to the locomotive. That was our salvation. The train stood still, but the roof tiles and panels of the station building flew away, large trees were uprooted, and the electric and telephone poles collapsed like matches.
As the morning dawned, the magnitude of the destruction began to clear. There was hardly a house in the town of Mannar that had not suffered damage. Large fishing boats were thrown up on the streets. The roads were full of rubbish and animal carcasses, cows, calves, sheep, and goats ravaged by dogs.
The worst cyclone in Ceylon's history landed at Trincomalee on the island's east coast and traveled across northern Ceylon to the Indian side of Dhanushkodi on the island of Pamban. The storm spread an unprecedented amount of destruction. The Pamban Bridge collapsed, and the town of Dhanushkodi and its station washed into the sea.
The train we traveled on from Madras twelve hours earlier was lost in the storm while returning across the Pamban Bridge, and with it, all 115 people lost their lives.
At least 1800 people from south India and north Ceylon lost their lives in that cyclone.
https://www.newindianexpress.com/galleries/nation/2017/dec/22/22-december-1964-cyclone-dhanushkodi-and-its-aftershock-nation-cant-forget-101123--8.html
I’ll continue this story and share what happened on the Ebeneser during the cyclone.
Such amazing interventions by God! Truly He cares for His children. Thank you for sharing Lisa 🙏
Wow! Fantastic story and thanks be to God!