Sri Lanka has taken significant strides in disaster prevention and mitigation since the Boxing Day catastrophe in 2004, said Disaster Management and Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe launching the seventh meeting of the regional Committee on Disaster Management yesterday. While calling the tsunami as an eye opener, the Minister noted that the country had come a long way with an effective mechanism in place today to counter such disasters in the future.

Gorai Creek is a big green shelter, a belt stretching above 5,000 acres of land covered with mangroves adjoining areas in different villages like Gorai, Malad and Dahisar. A tourist place heading towards the Mumbai's favorite picnic spot Essel World and Manori Beach. The mangroves are connected with small estuary, streets and rivers moving in all locations.

Dec 26 2004 TSUNAMI At least 230,000 people are killed and 43,000 are missing after a tsunami sparked by a magnitude 9.15 earthquake smashes into 13 Indian Ocean countries. More than half the victims are Indonesians, with Sri Lanka and India next worst hit. March 2005 INDONESIA Nearly 1,000 people are killed after an earthquake of magnitude 8.7 strikes off the island of Sumatra. July/Aug 2005 INDIA More than 1,000 people are killed after the heaviest rainfall recorded drenches the western state of Maharashtra. Oct 8 2005 PAKISTAN

Over three years after the tsunami nearly flattened parts of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, rehabilitation work is still on. Its progress seems slower than in other parts of the country. A scene from the picturesque Bamboo Flat permanent tenements is representative of the work in the entire archipelago. Completed houses, papered with expensive bamboo patterns, stand beside blocks of cement sticking out of wet mud

UNICEF's post-tsunami three-year Re-Building with Children Recovery Plan, is fast nearing completion. Responding to a request of the Education Ministry, UNICEF committed to building 21 schools islandwide, to replace facilities damaged or destroyed by the tsunami.

The world faces a "silent tsunami' of soaring food prices and more must be done to help secure future supply, the U.N. food agency said Tuesday as experts gathered in London for a special summit on the problem. The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) said an extra 100 million people who previously did not require help could now not afford to buy food. It said the soaring prices threatened anti-poverty and health improvement initiatives in the world's poorest nations and left a $755-million hole in the organization's $2.9-billion budget.

A regional forum under the Mangroves For the Future (MFF) project implemented in six countries in the tsunami aftermath will begin at Hotel Heritance, Ahungalle today. According to the country office of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the five-day forum will present and discuss outcomes of the preliminary programmes carried out in India, Indonesia, Maldives, Seychelles, Sri Lanka and Thailand. It will develop a framework for the actions. The IUCN sponsored forum will be attended by representatives from the six countries and resource persons.

Muniyamma, 30, and her family survived the tragic Boxing Day of 2004. But its aftermath has left her a widow and her four children fatherless. Her husband Pazhanivel, 38, immolated himself as the district administration tried to evict tsunami refugees from a temporary shelter in Kadambadi, near Nagapattinam.