Death toll from Sri Lanka floods, landslides rises to 334

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s disaster agency announced on Sunday that fatalities from the floods and landslides caused by Cyclone Ditwah had surged to 334, with many others still unaccounted for.

This marks the most severe natural calamity to strike the country in twenty years. Officials reported that the full scale of destruction in the hardest-hit central region was only beginning to emerge as relief crews cleared roads blocked by mudslides and fallen trees.

According to the Disaster Management Centre (DMC), the death count climbed from 212 earlier in the day to 334, with nearly 400 people still missing and more than 1.3 million residents across the nation affected by the unprecedented rainfall. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who imposed a state of emergency in response, pledged to rebuild with help from the international community.

“We are facing the largest and most challenging natural disaster in our history,” he said in a national address. “Certainly, we will build a better nation than what existed before.” The destruction is the worst the country has seen since the 2004 Asian tsunami, which claimed around 31,000 lives and displaced more than a million people.

Though rainfall had eased by Sunday, parts of the capital remained underwater, and authorities prepared for extensive rescue and relief efforts.

A Bell 212 helicopter transporting food to patients trapped at a hospital just north of Colombo crashed into a river on Sunday evening. All five crew members were transported to a nearby hospital.

Another helicopter, dispatched from India, rescued 24 stranded people on Sunday including a pregnant woman and a man in a wheelchair in the central town of Kotmale, roughly 90 kilometres (55 miles) northeast of Colombo, officials reported.

The air force also confirmed rescuing two infants and a 10-year-old child from a hospital in the northern town of Chilaw, which had been submerged on Saturday. Authorities noted that water levels in the capital would need at least another day to recede, though dry conditions were forecast. Cyclone Ditwah continued moving north toward India on Saturday.

‘Completely flooded’

Selvi, 46, from the Colombo suburb of Wennawatte, left her inundated home on Sunday with four bags of clothing and valuables. “My house is completely flooded. I don’t know where to go, but I hope there is some safe shelter where I can take my family,” she said.

As waters receded in Manampitiya, about 250 kilometres (155 miles) northeast of Colombo, widespread devastation became visible. “Manampitiya is a flood-prone town, but I have never seen such a volume of water,” said 72-year-old resident S. Sivanandan.