The Tsunami, Class 8 English, Chapter 2 Notes

Class 8 English Chapter 2 The Tsunami Notes

Summary Part 1

The stories are from Andaman and Nicobar islands. The first story is about Ignesious. His wife woke him up at 6 a.m. sensing an earthquake. Ignesious put the television on the ground to save it from the quake. Then all the members of the family rushed out. When the tremors stopped, they saw the sea rising. This caused them confusion. They ran but in opposite directions. His wife was swept away. Her two children along with her father and brother were also lost. Thus Ignesious lost his wife, two children, his father-in-law and his brother-in-law in the tsunami.

Sanjeev was a policeman. He managed to save himself, his wife and his baby daughter. Then he heard the cries for help. These were from John’s wife. John was the guest house cook. Sanjeev jumped into the water to save her. They both were swept away and drowned. Meghna was 13 years old. She was swept away along with her parents and seventy seven other people. She held on to a wooden door and kept floating on it for two days. She was brought to the shore by a wave and saved.

Almas was ten years old. The family was sleeping but her father had woken up. He saw the water receding after the tremors. He knew it would come back with great force. He woke everyone trying to rush to a safer place. As they ran his father fell down. Almas’s father rushed to help him. Then came a big wave and swept them both away. Her mother and aunts were washed away too. They were swept away with the tree they were holding on to. Almas saw a log of wood floating. She climbed on to it. Then she fainted. She woke up in a hospital in Kamorta.                                                                    

Summary Part 2

This is a story from Thailand. Tilly’s family had come to Thailand from England to celebrate Christmas. It was December 26. She was standing with her family on the beach. Tilly and her mother Penny Smith both saw the water swelling. The beach was getting smaller and smaller every moment. They saw the sea slowly rise and start to foams. Tilly saw the sea making whirlpools. Tilly’s mother was not alarmed by these signs. Tilly remembered the video that her geography teacher had shown in the class two weeks before, It occurred to her that these were the sure signs of tsunami. She screamed and asked her family to go off the beach. The mother did not sense anything terrible. She, however, felt that her daughter must be right. Tilly’s parents took her and her sister to the swimming pool at the hotel. Many others also left the beach with them, “Then it was as if the entire sea had come after them.” The family took refuge in the third floor of the hotel. The building withstood the force of the tsunami. If they had stayed on the beach, they would have been dead.

Some people believe that animals possess a sixth sense. Tsunami killed 1,50,000 people but only a few animals died. In Yala National Park in Sri Lanka sixty visitors were washed away but only two animals died. In the same Park people had observed three elephants run away from the beach an hour before the tsunami hit. A man on the coast near Galle in Sri Lanka had two dogs. On that fatal day of tsunami they refused to go to the beach with their master. So the master too stayed back. Thus the dogs had saved his life also.