It's Christmas Eve in Fleet Street, London. Every employee in every Tabloid and Broadsheet offices are busy compiling their lists of 2004. After Christmas and between New Year nothing happens, pubs are dead, nobody goes out and news is sparse. Pick up a typical newspaper the day after Boxing Day and chances are that the biggest story is what TV programme pulled in the most viewers over Christmas and other useless reports which were probably written well before Santa was loading his sleigh. This year though was different. Very different. As news reached us on Boxing Day about the earthquake Tsunami it made us think just how lucky we are. Every paper, radio station and news-related website is reporting back from this horrific disaster including us. ABLE2UK brings you a harrowing story about the disabled victims trapped in a shelter...

There were 102 disabled and sick people at the one story Sambodhi shelter on Christmas Day. Now there's 41 and that is at the time of this article being written. The others died. Witnesses saw disabled children desperately clinging onto mattresses whilst the water continued rising, the mattresses floated the children to their death. The earthquake and tsunami which occurred on the day after Christmas in Galle, Sri Lanka was taking lives by the second in Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and other surrounding areas. Nobody was safe, nobody could hide, especially those with disabilities. One lucky survivor was the wheelchair-bound caretaker, Kumar Deshapiya who has muscular dystrophy. Kumar had been down the market stocking up on food for the shelter. Upon his return he heard disturbing noises coming from outside and decided to investigate what the hell was going on,

"Once I got to the road, I saw that something strange was happening. ,I saw people running, shouting, screaming: 'The sea is coming inland.' Then I saw the sea, and it was not the same as before. It looked dark, black in color," he told reporters. "The water was coming down the road, twisting around. It's hard to describe. It was coming faster than a speeding car,"

What followed is pretty obvious. All hell broke loose in the shelter, cries of horror came from the children. Pillars tumbled to the floor, arched doorways collapsed, objects were thrown against walls and Cliff Richard was making calls to the Millennium Stadium Benefit Gig in Cardiff seeing it as a golden opportunity to make a comeback since he failed to have a Christmas number one.

Because of the panic and commotion inside the shelter it was vital to move as many Residents outside as there was the added fear that the whole building may cave in. A worker from outside shouted for all the able-bodied people to clear the building although a sick child couldn't understand his life was in danger,

"He was very joyful, seeing the water coming in. He was pointing it out to the other kids. He seemed very happy," explained Deshapiya who was wheeled onto a higher ground by a worker.

Those who were able to evacuate the shelter were lucky. Those who were unable to escape trapped in the shelter were in real danger, the wall around the building collapsed, mattress and their frames were scattered around the building and most the painful sight after the dismantlement was that of stuffed cuddly toys such as a dinosaur and a bunny once belonging to a disabled child were seen in the wreckage which was more which could be said of the children which used to cuddle up to them at nighttime.

Volunteers helped in the aftermath. Their task was to work around the decomposing bodies of the children and broken wheelchairs which were now rotting inside the shelter. Earlier survivors had managed to climb onto the roof only to return to the rubble below trying to follow the screams of terrified victims still stuck and trapped. Saroja Senivirathna is an employee at the shelter,

While I was on the roof, I thought the whole place was going to collapse," She said. "While these children were screaming, I decided it would be better to all die together rather than save my life alone. That's why I got down."

Survivors were taken to Buddhist temples and any other nearby building which could cater for them. Kumar is determined to rebuild the shelter as soon as possible as the Residents have no where else to go.