At least 37 die in Sri Lanka landslides
Print Edition
SRI Lanka’s President Maithripala Sirisena mourned the island’s “devastating loss” yesterday as the death toll from three days of torrential rain and landslides rose to 37, with more than 150 missing and rescuers still pulling bodies from the mud.
Sirisena flew to a central tea-growing area where images taken from a helicopter showed floodwaters engulfing entire villages and forested hills deluged with reddish mud.
“The loss is devastating,” the president posted on Twitter.
The Disaster Management Centre’s updated toll came after bodies were pulled out of the mud in the central village of Aranayake and neighboring Bulathkohupitiya.
“A total of 37 people have been killed, 28 wounded in weather-related incidents in the past three days,” DMC spokesman Pradeep Kodippili said yesterday.
The president met with people who had lost their loved ones as well as seen their homes destroyed. Sirisena has ordered troops to help evacuate people living on slopes or in flood-hit areas, while the navy and the air force have also been called in to help with relief operations.
In the area worst hit by landslides, 134 people were still unaccounted for.
“We have got complaints from relatives about their loved ones missing,” a police officer in the area said.
In total 155 people are still missing.
Meanwhile about 150 people living above the landslide-hit area have been rescued, military spokesman Jayanath Jayaweera told reporters.
“Army commandos rescued all of them this morning,” Jayaweera said, adding that 266 troops have been deployed for relief and rescue operations in the worst-affected central district of Kegalle.
Kegalle was prone to landslides and many people living there had fled their homes after the rains, DMC’s Kodippili said.
He countered a tweet from the Sri Lankan Red Cross that more than 200 families were missing, saying most had been accounted for and the death toll was not expected to rise significantly.
Sri Lanka Red Cross spokesmen Mahieash Johnny said that there had earlier been confusion about the number of people missing.
But Johnny said the latest updates from the scene suggested that an estimated 225 families were affected by the landslides and most of those families had moved to four relief camps in the area.
Police said many residents had fled the tea-growing and farming area before the landslides hit.
Over 350,000 people have been hit by flooding in Sri Lanka and 223,000 are sheltering in state-run welfare centres.
Villagers said torrents of muddy water, tree branches and debris came crashing down around their homes on Tuesday in the three villages, located at different heights on the same hill in Kegalle, about 72 kilometers north of Colombo.
“I heard a huge sound like a plane crashing into the Earth,” said 52-year-old A.G. Kamala, who had just returned to her house in one of the villages when the landslides hit.
“I opened my door. I could not believe my eyes, as I saw something like a huge fireball rolling down the mountain.”
Near the village of Elangapitiya, soldiers carried bodies to a school, where families waited for news of missing loved ones.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
