The buildings at the Thirunavukkarasu Nayanar Gurukulam orphanage, near Thirukovil, were destroyed by what was described as a 30-foot wave. The orphanage served 75 boys, ages 6 to 16. Most are Tamil Hindus whose parents were killed in ethnic battles that have torn Sri Lanka.

More than 30,000 people are confirmed dead and more than 3,000 reported missing in Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, an island nation off the southeast tip of India.

Only the open water of the Indian Ocean separates the island from the site of the earthquake off Sumatra that triggered the killer tsunami, which smashed low-lying villages, coastal roads and bridges along the entire eastern coastline of Sri Lanka. The orphanage sat on a heavily vegetated, low, sandy coast near the middle of the island's eastern side, directly in the tsunami's path.

Their frustration, said senior monk Paramacharya Palaniswami, is that communication is virtually nonexistent along the devastated coast. What little contact they have is passed through several international sources.

"It is almost impossible to get in touch with people there right now," Palaniswami said. "The orphans were seen running, with Kannan," the nickname of orphanage director Tiru B. Chandreswaran, a former orphan who returned to oversee the facility after he married.

Paramacharya Palaniswami

Yogi Japendranatha

The orphanage was started in 1984. Its spiritual leader was the late Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, familiarly known as Gurudeva, a Sri Lankan-trained Hindu priest who moved to Kaua'i and founded the Wailua monastery in 1970. He died in 2001. The monastery's Hindu Heritage Endowment helps support the Sri Lankan facility and six other orphanages.

Palaniswami said the orphanage is operated less as an orphanage than as an ashram, or spiritual center. The boys study religious teachings, yoga and meditation, and they themselves teach religion in the surrounding communities.

The Wailua Hindu monks have not heard of the fate of another Sri Lanka monastery they assist, the Swami Vipulananta Children's Home in Akkaraipattu, Palaniswami said.

The Wailua monastery has been touched by the tsunami in other ways. Its spiritual leader, Satguru Bodhinatha, was teaching a weeklong seminar on the Malaysian coast, and several dozen students were walking on the beach nearby when water suddenly rose from ankle to shoulder level.

The water was not turbulent, perhaps because that section of Malaysia was protected from the direct path of the tsunami by the bulk of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, said Yogi Japendranatha, a Wailua monk who was assisting Bodhinatha.

"It happened in seconds. They described an undertow, but they were able to struggle to safety," Japendranatha said.