CRS president describes tsunami devastation in Sri Lanka

Published: 2005-01-11

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- While meeting in the destroyed home of a Sri Lankan fisherman, Ken Hackett, president of Catholic Relief Services, said his eyes became transfixed on a clock hanging on the home's lone remaining wall. It read "9:33." It was that time in the morning Dec. 26 that a series of waves crushed through Sri Lanka's southern tip, killing more than 30,000 people. Hackett was in Sri Lanka with Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington to view firsthand the extent of the damage caused by the tsunamis. "There was nothing left of his house; we sat on a concrete slab as we listened to his story," Hackett told Catholic News Service in a telephone interview Jan. 11 from Galle, Sri Lanka. CRS is the U.S. bishops' international relief and development agency. A trauma specialist provided the man's young children with coloring books so that they could describe their ordeal. The children showed their paintings to Hackett and the cardinal. "Some painted their house, some painted the wave covering their house," Hackett said. "But there were no people in the painting."

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