Phone call saved an entire village

People in an Indian village were saved from death in the tsunami by a phone call from Singapore.

Nallavadu, in the Union Territory of Pondicherry near Chennai, escaped the loss of its population by the quick thinking of a former resident, The Hindu newspaper reported.

The village is part of a project run by the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation and one of the foundation's former volunteers now works in Singapore. 

The volunteer - identified by The Hindu's website as Vijayakumar - saw a tsunami warning in Singapore and immediately phoned the village's research centre, setting off a local alert.

A warning was repeatedly announced over the village's public address system and a siren sounded allowing people time to move away from the danger area before the waves hit.

As a result, not one of Nallavadu's 3,600 residents was killed while the surrounding area suffered massive loss of life.

The Indian government says that in total there are 10,736 confirmed and presumed dead as a result of the Boxing Day disaster.