Talk:Velankanni

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== Veilankanni – the worst hit by Tsunami ==]]

Tsunami has brought devastating changes in South East Asia. It has done its due in the coastal region of Tamil Nadu. Its 720 km east coast has been hit severely. Of all the places Nagapattinam and Veilankanni are the worst hit places.

Veilankanni for the few centuries has a marked place in the Christian world. In the past few decades the glory and fame of this noted Marian shrine has grown in multi fold. Every day thousands of people flock here to pray, to fulfill votives to Our Lady of Good Health. In a special way many people prefer to spend their Christmas time in this sanctuary. They are from different walks of life and different parts of India.

The 26th of December 2004 dawn like any other Sunday. The shrine, the surrounding places and the seashore were bustling with a lot of activities. The masses were being celebrated and thousands took part joyfully in thanking God for all the graces that they received. Thousands tonsured their heads and went to the sea for the holy tip.

The mass in Malayalam language begun At 9 a.m. By 9.15 a.m. there was a big sound and the could not believe their eyes. The waves rose to an unimaginable height and started coming towards the shrine with a great speed and enormous force. It washed away all the shops, came up to the Viyagula Matha chapel, and with the same force got back to the sea, bringing down the structures and taking the people with it. On the other side in the backwater river the water entered violently demolishing all the compound walls, and water entered through the retreat center. It pulled down walls along the Stations of the Cross and brought with it a lot of dead bodies. In few minutes the adoration chapel, bus stand, parking zone and many lodges were filled with 4 feet water. After five minutes there was a big cue and cry and scattered bodies everywhere. The electricity went off, communication means went dead. The holy town became a ghost town. People immediately started running out of veilankanni. The transport got stand still.

As no one was prepared for this disaster, all one could do was to stare at one another with helplessness. It took a few hours before something could move. By late afternoon the shrine officials started moving to do something. First the pilgrims were asked to get out of veilankanni. The local residents ran off by themselves. The shrine workers too ran off from their respective work places.

With the little work force available slowly the rescue operation begun. The only thing that they could do was collecting the dead bodies. As there were no enough people, on the first day little was done. A request was made to the parishes to sent volunteers to help them out. A few parishes responded immediately, volunteers from Anna Nagar and Madakottai parishes arrived veilankanni shortly after midnight. They were about 80 youths.

On 27th early in the morning they started collecting the bodies. They did every thing with bare hands. They had no instruments to do these things. There was neither medical team nor government officials. At the end of the day more than 1000 (one thousand) bodies were collected. Some of them were identified but many were not. I could see a score of people who lost their entire family. I met a boy called Tony who lost 11 members of his family and was a lone survivor. There were many more who were left behind alone. Many could not even get back the bodies. Among the dead there were many children. Late in the evening the unidentified bodies were buried in a mass grave.

As on 28th the recovery of body still continues. The number could be as same as on 27th. But we do not know how many more got washed away by the sea and never came back. We started getting information from distant places that bodies reached there. Only God knows how many got perished. But it is sure that only in veilankanni it is not less than a few thousands.

Until now the power has not been restored, there is no water and food. From 26th morning food and water has been sent from Tanjore. We hope that the situation improves in a few days time. But the restructuring and rehabilitation would take long time. That certainly involves much energy, huge sum of money and the providence of God.

Fra. Sahayaraj osm

Article Needs Cleanup

This article is supposed to be about Velankanni, the town, its location, people, importance, economy and so forth. The huge bulk of the article deals with a narrative of the events in Velankanni after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami hit it. What should we do about this article? Should we spin off the events as a separate article "Impact of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake in Velankanni", or should we make it a section within the current article? Is there anything else we can do? --Brhaspati 00:11, 2005 Jan 5 (UTC)

Now that's a clean up for a useless place.

-narayana

Wikify

This article needs links to other Wikipedia articles (there's not a single one between the lead paragraph and the External links section). See Wikipedia:How to edit a page or Wikipedia:Links for information on linking. - dcljr (talk) 04:30, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I've started the wikification/cleanup. Someone want to take over? - dcljr (talk) 18:41, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

I would like to display an image from wikicommons in the infor panel. Kindly help. Melquirrajan (talk) 05:45, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

http://www. tamilnow.com/ - a spammer

It seems http://www. tamilnow.com/ is a spammer and has added lots of links - please clean up and block the site —Preceding unsigned comment added by BrownyCat (talk • contribs) 14:43, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Aazhip Peralai

Velankanni article should be about Velankanni - place of pilgirimage and about the church. There is no need for sharing experience on the Aazhip Peralai. If anyone is interested, please write articles about Aazhip Peralai at Tsunami —Preceding unsigned comment added by BrownyCat (talk • contribs) 16:44, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Telephone numbers of guest houses and hotels

The article is provided with telephone numbers belonging to few guest houses and hotels located in Velankanni town. The article has given only the contact numebers and has not promoted any special facility that may be available in such places. So, I consider the information provided is useful and not an advertisement. More over, the list has a variety and not just talk about one single entity or group or organisation. Please discuss here before removing them, if you consider them as in-appropriate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BrownyCat (talk • contribs) 09:57, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid this a clear violation of WP:NOT; ie, wikipedia is not a travel agent and we do not provide contact information for businesses. I removed the entire section for that reason, and the section called "How to travel..." as well, for violating the same policy (WP is not a "How to X" guide for anything). Finally, I'm in the process of removing several sections which are about the church, not the town. The single section that remains which focuses entirely on the church is still the longest section in the article and very disproportionate to the village's overall history; it should probably be rewritten and reduced. Feel free to create a separate article about the church which certainly seems notable enough to have its own page. Happy editing, Doc Tropics 19:37, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Section Blanking

Recently a user: Doc Tropics has indulged in section blanking as he has felt that lot of the contents in the article are not related to Velanakanni. Wiki articles are developed not with one sigle person's opinion. Its a group effort. This article has grown to this stage because of contributions made by different users in different levels in different times. If any user who want to remove the contents in sections, please discuss the same here before doing so. Please do not indulge in edit war. BrownyCat (talk) 05:18, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm afraid that you seem to mix up information from different topics into a related yet irrelevant article. You might want to look at articles on the Vatican City and St. Peter's Basilica. I'm sorry, but inclusion of Basilica of Our Lady of Good Health related information to an article on the town is not acceptable. Moreover, if we have such large sections of same info on both the Church and the Town entries, this would simply mean that the town doesn't warrant to have an independent article. BTW: feel free to add tourist information to the article in this link but not on wikipedia. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia! --Wiki San Roze ^†αLҝ 06:39, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks WSR, for the accurate and concise explanation. The material that was removed from this article simply didn't belong here. As I explained to BrownyCat on my personal talkpage, some of the info belongs in an article about the church, but some of it is irrelevant and simply doesn't belong at all.

BC, it can be frustrating, but no one is attacking you personally, or your work. We all have the same goals: following WP policies to produce the best articles we can. Sometimes the right way to improve an article is by removing things that don't belong and that is what's happening here. It still needs some major rewriting and reorganization which I will also try to help with. Please try to assume good faith in other editors. Thanks, Doc Tropics 14:41, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Name

The article/subject name is currently Velankanni Town but the 2001 census used as a reference indicates the proper name is simply Velankanni. Some small municipalities do use the word "town" as part of their proper name, but this does not appear to be the case with Velankanni. The article should be changed to reflect this and simply written as Velankanni, with appropriate redirects as necessary. Are there objections, support, or semi-random thoughts other editors would like to share? Thanks, Doc Tropics 15:10, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Would prefer it to be Velankanni (town) since Velankanni by itself is a commonly used name for the church or the apparition venerated there. This is why Velankanni used to be a dab page in the past ([1]). --Wiki San Roze ^†αLҝ 15:20, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Admins please help this article

Admins, please take quick note and save this articles from the hands of people with cetain agenda! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.102.167.83 (talk) 09:11, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Could you explain what the agenda might be? lol --Wiki San Roze ^†αLҝ 09:13, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

There appear to be a number of issues with this edit, including WP:NPOV, WP:V, WP:NOTHOWTO and WP:NOTDIRECTORY. Wording such as "Velankanni church is considered a very powerful holy place in India where one is cured of any medical ailment when one offers prayers with a true heart." for example, don't belong in an article, unless you have a reliable source that can verify that one is cured of any medical ailment, because that would warrant an entire article of its own, as opposed to a brief mention on this one. - SudoGhost 09:52, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

The text here (and in the following sections) (at 09:13, 13 January 2012) is not acceptable at Wikipedia because this is not a free webhosting service—it is an encyclopedia that presents sourced and encyclopedic information. Articles do not provide how to information—this is not a travel guide or promotional opportunity. Finally, the text is a copyright violation and editors who repeatedly post copyright violations are blocked (see when to visit and how to reach for two examples). Johnuniq (talk) 10:16, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Note: Most of the content removed from this article appears (quite properly) in Basilica of Our Lady of Good Health where it is covered in greater depth and with higher quality writing. Thanks again to Wiki San Roze for excellent work on that piece. Doc Tropics 14:47, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Copy-editing required

This article requires copy editing for tone and style as it mostly focusses on shrine with bad citation style. Also most of the images in Gallery section are of the church only than of the place, despite the presence of {{commonscat}}. --βα£α(ᶀᶅᶖᵵᵶ) 19:53, 17 February 2014 (UTC)