Thiruvananthapuram, Dec. 30: Trains stopped in their tracks, doctors scampered out of hospital wards and a priest rushed through a wedding mass.

Close to the beach, Isro?s Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre shifted its staff to safer locations.

Residents of Kerala?s coastal belt fled their homes after the government sounded a fresh tsunami alert and policemen came out in hailer-fitted vehicles asking people living within 2 km of the coast to ?evacuate immediately?. By nightfall, people had not returned to their dwellings.

The panic set in around 11 am after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had left Colachel in Tamil Nadu?s Kanyakumari district. Telephone lines jammed as rumours spread that the sea was rising.

Soon after the alert, chaos reigned on the Kerala-Tamil Nadu highway as terrified residents tried to jump on to passing vehicles. What followed was a repeat of Monday night?s exodus when a heaving human tide rolled from coastal Kerala to interior towns after a warning that another tsunami could slam ashore ?within an hour?.

Trains were delayed to allow level crossings to remain open. Nuns from the All Saints? College rushed out in a bus to the safety of a sister institution. At least 80,000 people reached temporary shelters within an hour of the alert. The government made RTC busses available for evacuation.

In coastal areas of Kollam district, where Sunday?s tsunami claimed nearly 150 people, government staff hurried home to take their families to safety. In Sakthikulangara, the parish priest of St John Britto?s Church hurriedly finished a wedding service.

In the island cluster in commercial capital Kochi, people squatted on roads and bridges looking westward, towards the sea, for any sign of rising waves.

Further north, in Kozhikode, Kannur and Kasargod, patients were shifted out of beachside hospitals. In Kozhikode, doctors and nurses ran out of hospitals after hearing of the ?advancing tsunami?.

Within a few hours of the alert, the nearly 700-km coastal stretch from Kasargod to Kanyakumari had been emptied of its folk.