BBC correspondent Roland Buerk: Breathing Sri Lanka's Torment

"We were swept along with motorbikes and cars, bits of wall and the ruins of buildings. It was not a question of swimming for your life. The tsunami was too powerful for that....Every so often, someone would come up to us and tell us they were sorry that we had been caught up in this disaster in their country, that we had come here as their guest. We said that we were sorry too, for all they had lost."