Hopes fade for victims of Sri Lanka landslides
Print Edition
HOPES faded yesterday for the survival of about 130 people trapped under the mud and rubble of two landslides in Sri Lanka, as heavy rain hampered rescue operations and the toll from the disaster rose to 58.
Days of torrential rains have forced around 300,000 people from their homes across the island nation, data showed. Thirty bodies have been retrieved at the landslide sites.
That figure is likely to rise sharply as authorities battling muddy conditions begin to give up hope of reaching 132 people believed to be trapped beneath the landslides.
“I don’t think there will be any survivors,” Major General Sudantha Ranasinghe, the officer in charge of the rescue operation, said. “There are places where the mud level is up to 30 feet. We will keep going until we can recover the maximum.”
Rescue efforts have focused on the town of Aranayaka, 100 kilometers northeast of the capital, Colombo, where three villages with at least 66 houses were buried late on Tuesday in the central district of Kegalle.
Military officials used hoes and shovels to shift mud as they scrambled to find survivors in heavy rain that made walking in the hilly terrain difficult.
The military pulled three bodies and parts of another two from rubble at the site of the second landslide that buried 16 people, Ranasinghe said.
HP Kamalawathi, 41, said she is still looking for her mother and two elder sisters, who were buried on Tuesday. “We may get only the dead bodies,” the mother of two said as tears rolled down her cheeks. She and her family had sought safety in a nearly Buddhist temple.
“We can’t take any chance. We will dig and see,” Disaster Management Minister Anura Priyadharshana Yapa said in Colombo after briefing diplomats and international bodies. Sri Lanka is seeking assistance to deal with the worst landslides in its history.
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