Sonia Gandhi comforts a tsunami victim in Parka village on Car Nicobar island. (AFP)

Kalpakkam, Dec. 27: Nearly 2,000 people have been evacuated from near the shoreline in Kalpakkam, which was hit by tsunami yesterday in the wake of the devastation, though the nuclear plant escaped damage.

?The nuclear power plant (Kalpakkam has two units of 220 MW each besides a research reactor and the Fast Breeder Test Reactor at IGCAR) is absolutely safe as, within minutes of the undersea earthquake striking Sumatra in Indonesia, the plant was shut down as our seismograph can pick up these signals,? said a scientific officer at Kalpakkam.

The situation in the residential colony, which was cut off from the rest of Kalpakkam, is a different story.

Pudupattinam, where several scientific officers of the Madras Atomic Power Station and the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research live, resembled a graveyard today.

Two thousand people, including employees of the nuclear plant and their family members, were transported to a makeshift camp at Anupuram ? a short distance from the Kalpakkam plant ? where quarters had been constructed for officers and scientists working in new projects, including the prototype fast breeder reactor.

Most residences close to the shoreline in Pudupattinam were locked early today as people had been advised by the Madras Atomic Power Station authorities to move out to either the less affected part of the residential colony or the camp at Anupuram.

?Fortunately, the army and the Central Industrial Security Force took charge last night and prevented antisocials from plundering our houses,? said Arun, a scientific officer.

The receding waters left behind a trail of destruction ? overturning scores of cars and trapping two-wheelers in the silt.

The ground-floor homes were covered in silt pushed in by the tsunami. Furniture, electronic appliances and other household items were mostly damaged.