Sri Lanka is ‘a disaster zone,’ as cyclone deaths surpass 350

By PAMODI WARAVITA and MUJIB MASHAL

Sri Lanka’s recent history has been riddled with serious setbacks. But President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has declared that the cyclone that hit the country last week is the “largest and most challenging natural disaster in our history.”

In 2004, as the island nation of 22 million was trying to wind down a decades-long civil war, the Indian Ocean tsunami killed tens of thousands and caused billions of dollars in damage. In recent years, Sri Lanka has faced terrorist attacks, the COVID pandemic, and an economic collapse that saw food and fuel supplies dry up.

Then, late last week, Cyclone Ditwah landed, unleashing a wave of flooding and landslides across the country and submerging entire towns. On Monday, the death toll climbed past 350, hundreds were missing and tens of thousands of people were displaced.

“The estimated scale of destruction is severe,” Dissanayake said.

The flooding and landslides have affected more than 1 million people, and emergency response efforts have been overwhelmed. On Monday, rescue teams, aided by personnel and aircraft from neighboring India, were trying to reach areas that had become inaccessible. More than 15,000 homes have been destroyed, according to a United Nations assessment released on Sunday.

The cyclone has moved on to India’s southern coast, but more heavy rainfall and flooding was predicted in some parts of Sri Lanka, a tourist favorite for its scenic beauty and heritage sites.

Dr. Vinya Ariyaratne, the president of the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement, one of Sri Lanka’s largest community-based development organizations, said that all the country’s 25 districts have been affected, and that floods and landslides had a severe effect in about 22 of them.

“The whole country is a disaster zone, except for a few places,” he said. “That’s the difference between the tsunami and this one — the tsunami was only coastal areas.”

“It’s massive, massive damage in terms of infrastructure, houses, livelihoods and also businesses,” he said.

In the east of the country, a region ravaged by the Sri Lankan army’s campaign against the Tamil Tiger insurgents during the civil war, the cyclone has added to the wounds of the conflict.

Krishnapillai Pragash, 50, has been farming in Batticaloa district since he was 15 and said six of his 10 acres of land were destroyed.

In the final stretch of the civil war, which ended in 2009, Pragash went to Qatar to work as a migrant laborer. Farming in Sri Lanka had become difficult with constant harassment from the military, which viewed the Tamil population with suspicion, he said.

In 2018, Pragash returned to farming. Before the cyclone hit, he was just beginning to recover from the government’s devastating decision to restrict chemical fertilizers, in part to preserve dwindling foreign exchange reserves as the economic collapse loomed. Transportation disruptions during the pandemic lockdown added to the misery.

“We are safe for now,” he said by telephone. “But the question is how rebuilding is going to happen in the future.”

In the coastal district of Gampaha, in the west, more than 17,000 people were moved to safety centers set up by relief agencies. Others took shelter in a line of tents that dotted the main road to keep an eye on their homes in the village below, even though the buildings were submerged.

Ganga Niroshini, 46, said she kept a flashlight pointed toward her house all night from a makeshift shelter.

“Our area is known for drugs,” she said. “We’re scared that drug users will break into our houses as the water recedes, or steal our vehicles.”

Some services were starting to return to normal. By Monday, authorities had partly restored train services, electricity and telecommunications. But it will take time to repair the country’s infrastructure, with at least 10 bridges damaged and more than 200 major roads remaining “impassable,” according to the country’s road development authority.

Access to clean drinking water remained a major problem in large parts of the country.

The reconstruction effort will be a challenge for the government, which came to office last year on the back of a large protest movement that overthrew a powerful dynasty that many Sri Lankans blamed for mismanaging the economy. Dissanayake was trying to get the country back on track with an International Monetary Fund bailout and cost cuts.

“With the nation affected from end to end, this is a highly challenging exercise that needs to be conquered,” the president said Sunday.