Sri Lanka's Kandy: a lesson in climate change, human error

CHENNAI: Cyclone-struck Sri Lanka's Kandy district -- the seat of the last Royal kingdom of Ceylon -- suffered extensive damage and was the worst-hit by the Ditwah disaster, which has claimed a total of 618 lives in the island nation.

Catastrophic floods and landslides following Cyclone Ditwah have left Sri Lanka grappling with severe infrastructure collapse as search operations continue for those buried under landslides a week after the disaster struck the country.

Surrounded by three mountain ranges and set in a basin-like valley, Kandy city escaped direct damage except for disruptions to its road network, electricity, and communication.

However, the devastation in the district’s outer areas in the rural heartland was disastrous.

Till Saturday night, Kandy district had accounted for 232 of the 618 deaths verified so far. It leads with 91 disappearances and 1,800 fully destroyed homes.

Uprooted trees alongside badly damaged structures are a common sight, and rescue teams are still struggling to reach some of the villages cut off from road access there.

An expert indicated that "unplanned and haphazard settlements" were a cause of the disaster.

One such village is in the Minipe administrative division, 75 miles east of the city, 145 feet above sea level.

Here unfolded the tragic tale of the village of Nelummala (the lotus flower).

Around 5:30 in the evening on November 27, boulders came descending from a nearby range, burying all 21 houses in the village, along with the people inside.

"I managed to save six of them,” Rev Palletanne Chandrananda, 34, a Buddhist monk who ran a Buddhist school in the village, told PTI on the phone.

He believes over 30 people are dead while the search is still on.

Once a beautiful, quaint village amidst acres of paddy fields, it now stands as a site of boulders and loose earth with not a trace of the happier times.

A female villager who did not want to be identified said she was thankful to the monk for her survival. “We do not know what to do now, how to restart our lives, school books, clothes and everything lost,” she said.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake visited the district on Saturday and told the officials that allowing unauthorised construction of premises was as much of a problem as the nature of the disaster.

No constructions in danger areas will be allowed in future, he said.

The president also pledged a SLR 5 million grant to construct a new house for fully destroyed homes and a SLR 5 million grant for land acquisition to rebuild homes lost to the disaster.

Kalum Samarasena, a university lecturer based in Kandy, said that while unplanned, haphazard settlement was a cause, the policymakers need to think more deeply.

“What happened in places like Minipe is a warning – a warning on climate change," Samarasena told PTI.

“The government must start planning settlements from now on. Giving cash handouts is not the answer. People will naturally go back to their old places with cash. They must be resettled on state lands with necessary precautions to face disasters as these in a planned way," Samarasena said.

The cyclone wreaked havoc in the island nation and severely strained Sri Lanka's disaster-response capacity, and various nations, including India, are assisting in the rehabilitation process.

India was the first country to respond to Sri Lanka’s international appeal for assistance under its Operation Sagar Bandhu.