Abstract:
This article reveals that the different aspect of sustainable recovery process, where
engineers should have played a different and profound professional roll in post tsunami
development process. Unfortunately, our beloved country, which all this time was spared by
calamities of this magnitude, ultimately had to face the savage judgement of nature. The ravaging
waves not only engulfed valuable lives of our very own but also brought down everything we had
built in our coastal towns over the centuries in the blink of an eye the tsunami disaster has deeply
affected the lives of the families living throughout the coastal belts of the country causing to be
disrupted both by the damage to infrastructure and facilities for livelihood, as well as the disruption
in the family structure and displacement of families. In addition to the negative impact, the tsunami
has had on the livelihood support infrastructure in the 65% of the tsunami affected areas of Sri Lanka
is also struggling to recover from three decades of civil war. The prolonged conflict, coupled with the
impact of the tsunami has not only affected the livelihood support infrastructure, but the most of the
other infrastructures as well. Hence the engineers are having the profound professional
responsibilities to first to recover the damage caused by the natural disaster, then by
rehabilitating/re-constructuring the damaged facilities. The final task to the engineers must be to
support sustainable development activities to improve the socio economic status of the disaster
affected community. The strategy spelled out in this article will be common for even post war
recovery process also.
