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119 6 Business Recovery Tourism and Construction The tsunami damaged businesses both large and small up and down Sri Lanka’s southern coastline. The value of the damages in Sri Lanka was estimated at US$1.1 billion , with 31.8 percent of these damages in productive sectors (Telford, Cosgrave, and Houghton 2006, 37). Highly visible in the international news were the loss of fishing boats and the destruction of tourist hotels. An estimated seventy-five thousand people lost their livelihoods in the fishing industry (RADA 2006, 8), and the tsunami damaged 58 of Sri Lanka’s 242 registered hotels (Institute of Policy Studies 2005, 52). Official help was put in place for business recovery for corporations and workers in the formal economy. Various government ministries, departments, and agencies, private sector actors, and international organizations coordinated loans, grants, and other activities for livelihood restoration and development (RADA 2006, 9). A local Samurdhi Bank worker reported to me that the government poverty alleviation program suspended for a time the repayment of existing loans and extended additional funds for all sorts of small businesses, for example the making of incense sticks or hand-rolled cigarettes, coconut fiber work, masonry or carpentry work, small grocery stores, and the peddling of items by bicycle. By mid-2006, Rs. 4,769 million (roughly US$47 million) had been distributed to support small businesses (RADA 2006, 10). Other banks also offered special low-interest loans for larger businesses rebuilding from the tsunami (Institute of Policy Studies 2005, 51). In Naeaegama, people discussed losses suffered by local businesses. Siri told me, “Jinadasa had a large stock of wood at his sawmill. The tsunami waves lifted up those 120 | The Golden Wave logs and knocked them like battering rams into all the houses in Piyagama. Jinadasa is still out there collecting his logs! He had a heart attack when saw the loss.” In the same vicinity, the tsunami wiped out Tsunami Hugo’s eight-thousand-bird poultry farm; neighbors found thousands of dead chickens (and a couple of living ones) in the seaside wreckage. Carson said that in Randombe the tsunami waves broke the school wall across the road, broke the wall in front of his property, damaged the family’s business building, and destroyed the articles inside it that his son-in-law needed for his job installing and maintaining telephone lines. “The water was only here for about fifteen minutes, but it did a lot of damage,” Carson told me. While beachside businesses lost buildings and materials, businesses located further inland also suffered. Many families in Naeaegama make their living by processing and selling coconut fiber products. Lalani noted that her family’s broom business took a hit after the tsunami: “For about three months, we couldn’t sell anything. It took a few months for the beachside families to clean the mud out of their houses and want to buy brooms and garden rakes again.” Local businesses were adversely affected not only by the tsunami but also by the distribution of relief aid. In 2005, local bakeries suffered because of the wide availability of free flour. Thilaka reported that business at her cousin’s bakery had gone down because of the tsunami and that some of the shops along the Galle Road that sold bread had closed. “People have gotten flour from the government, so they are making flatbread instead of buying bread,” she reported. One of her cousin’s bakers confirmed this news, adding, “We used to have three people working and now we only have two.” Although the tsunami hazard itself lasted less than half a day in Sri Lanka, the disaster unfolded over a much longer period (Oliver-Smith and Hoffman 2002, 3, 12). Understanding the disaster’s full range of effects requires analysis of both the geophysical event and the political economic context in which it occurred. The term disaster capitalism refers to a major reorganization of the economic system prompted by, excused by, or done under cover of a disaster (Klein 2007; Schuller 2008). Such economic upheavals, although sometimes prompted by benign motives, often have detrimental results. In a number of cases, the changes benefit the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor and marginalized. A number of Sri Lankan industries underwent consolidation and reorganization in the aftermath of disaster. Gaasbeek (2010, 137) notes that NGO-fueled wage inflation in the East pulled many laborers into construction; facing a labor shortage, local farmers turned to combine harvesters, a...

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