by Melani Manel Perera

Torrential rain causes havoc, damages agriculture. Thousands of people are displaced and forced into temporary shelters. Army is mobilised for rescue operations.

Colombo (AsiaNews) – The provisional death toll from last week monsoon rains in Sri Lanka now stands at 18 with the number of displaced people exceeding 61,000. Flooding caused by the torrential downpour that began last Friday has wiped entire tea plantations and drenched farm land of every kind.

Nimal Hettiarachchi, director of the National Disaster Management Centre, reports that all 18 people who died were from the southern eastern and central regions of the country. Wherever possible, schools have been turned into temporary shelters for the 61,000 and more evacuees from the danger zone. But as rain tapers off, some are already making their way home.

In hardest-hit Nuwara Eliya landslides damaged about 1,600 houses. “We have come here [a place called Agrakanda] to se what we can do [. . .]. There are eight families who were displaced and their homes completely washed away. Now these families are staying at Waltrim Tamil School, about 50 people including small children,” K.S.S. Francis, a 30-year-old Catholic social worker and co-ordinator for Savisthri-Mathiyugam Centre in Lindula (Nuwara Eliya district), told AsiaNews.

The army is involved in continuing rescue operations, providing hot food and essential items to the victims from the hardest-hit areas.

Sri Lanka is highly dependent on monsoon rains for irrigation and hydro-electric power but also very vulnerable to them. It is not rare for people to be killed and for lowland areas to be flooded during the monsoon season.

• sri
• lanka
• monsoon
• rains
• death
• destruction