A DECADE after they were caught up in the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami, a city couple are still going strong in their efforts to support the people of Sri Lanka.

Don Gallagher, 65, and Della Sar, 66, set up The Friends of Della and Don to provide better facilities like health and education for the area they were staying in when the Boxing Day wave hit 14 countries on December 26, 2004, killing 230,000.

The couple, from Rectory Road, St Clement’s, Oxford, were on a fortnight’s holiday in Ramalana and stayed on until January 8, 2005, to help people affected by the tsunami, created by the third largest ever recorded earthquake.

Some 35,000 Sri Lankans died and the charity – which has running costs of up to £20,000 a year – supports two schools, two nurseries, an orphanage and a weekly health clinic, thanks to fundraising in the UK.

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The money they’ve raised has bought two fishing boats, shoes, meals, materials for classroom activities and classes like sewing and home economics at the orphanage.

Retired publishing company marketing director Mrs Sar said: “I didn’t think nine years later we would still be going out there twice a year and doing everything we do.”

Having returned last month from their latest visit, she said: “It is the children – the extraordinary excitement when we are coming, the fact three children have O-Levels, something inconceivable in the past.”

She said: “They were already living in very poor conditions but when people living in poor conditions lose absolutely everything it seems even more traumatic.”

Their guide changed their schedule that moved them to the village and she said: “Had we stuck to our original plan I would not be speaking right now. We were supposed to be staying on the other side of the island where no-one survived.”

She credits a fisherman, who moments before warned of “something wrong with the sea” with saving her life as he held on to her and a tree.

“I would have without question drowned if he had not done that. It came over us.

“We saw so much death and destruction. We didn’t know it was a tsunami, all the news programmes were down.

“We will carry on until we run out of money.”

The couple soon decided to set up the charity after seeing fundraising efforts at home.

Retired Wadham College common room butler Mr Gallagher – who managed to outrun the water – said: “Having seen the pleasure we have given to the children, the improvements we have made to their lifestyles, it makes me want to carry on.”

How tsunami took its toll

  • THE Asian tsunami of 2004 was the fourth largest earthquake since 1900 and the biggest since 1964 with a reading of up to 9.3 on the Richter scale
  • At 7.58am local time, 12.58am in the UK, a 745-mile land plate raised up 20 metres under another plate about 19 miles under the Indian Ocean
  • This raised the sea floor by several metres and released energy the equivalent of 23,000 atomic bombs which hit Hiroshima in 1945
  • Waves grew from 50cm but, at speeds of about 500mph, rose to up to 10 metres, or 32 feet
  • After striking 13 countries including Indonesia and Sri Lanka, the waves went inland

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  • A survivor walks among the wreckage following the 2004 tsunami

 

  • At least 226,000 people died with 166,000 in Indonesia and 16,000 in Sri Lanka
  • The dead included 5,000 foreign tourists, including 49 Britons, and about a third of the total dead were children.
  • A further 500,000 were injured and an estimated five million people lost their homes. Reconstruction costs were estimated at £4.8bn
  • Prime Minister Tony Blair said after the disaster: “It is not simply the absolute horror of what has happened and how many people's lives have been touched. But it is also the fact that the consequences of this are not just short-term and immediate, but long-term, and will require a great deal of work by the international community for months, if not years, to come.”

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