Rebuilding post-disaster

March 31, 2010  

Wijegoonaratna provides homes for displaced Sri Lankans.

By Danielle Beurteaux

They saw houses flattened, fishing boats flipped on their sides, and people who had lost everything but the clothes they were wearing waiting for help by the side of the road.

Days after the 2004 tsunami that devastated Southeast Asia, killing some 230,000 people, S.P. "Wije" Wijegoonaratna drove with his father around the coast of Galle—the district his family comes from in Sri Lanka—and witnessed the chaos firsthand. After Indonesia, the country was the worst hit, with more than 35,000 deaths, 100,000 homes destroyed and more than half a million people made homeless. In Galle, on Sri Lanka's southwest coast, more than 128,000 people were...

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