| Plus |
|
|||
|
Reign of earth
What
happened next was terrifying. He felt a sudden tremor, followed
by what sounded like a huge explosion. A section of the mountain
towering over the village was rolling down. He instinctively ran
out and up the road as the sound got louder and louder. Within five
minutes, all was quiet except for the sound of the rain. But the landslide
that occurred had taken its toll: six lives, several homes and hundreds
of acres of paddy and other agricultural lands. Five days after
mother nature unleashed her fury on this sleepy and picturesque
village in the Balangoda district, its inhabitants were making their
way in their Their sealed
coffins lay inside the small hall of their house about a kilometre
away from where the tragedy happened. "Their bodies were bloated
and barely recognisable when they were found," Karunawathie's
older son Tusitha said sadly. Karunawathie's
only daughter Subhadra Kalyani is expecting her second baby next
month. She had been informed of the tragedy only two days after
the incident -after the bodies were recovered. "I live
in another village. My husband didn't want me to hear the news because
of the condition I am in. I can't believe my mother and brother
are gone," she said. Karunawathie
and her son had been at the tomato plot they cultivate when the
landslide began. It is likely they were inside the wooden hut and
unable to leave because of the heavy downpour. The other victims
were four members of the same family who had been swept away with
their entire home. Only two of their bodies have been recovered,
one about four kilometres away close to the Samanalawewa dam - that
of a five-month-old baby and the other of the mother. The baby's
grandmother and another family member were also killed. S.M.S.Kumarihamy
(76), said her entire five bed-roomed house had been buried by the
landslide. She had taken her grandson for a tuition class and had
sought shelter in a nearby boutique because of the heavy rain. "I wanted
to come home but it was raining very hard. If I had come, my grandson
and I would have both been dead today," she said. Kumarihamy
has been living in the village for 60 years but this is the first
time such a landslide had occurred as far as she can remember. "I have
been left homeless. My husband is no more. Our entire savings were
spent to build this house," she lamented. The house next
to hers, owned by her daughter had been given on rent to S.B. Mano,
the General Manager of the Greenwood Holiday Inn- Badulla eight
days earlier. Although the house is still standing, its windows
are shattered and the house is swamped in mud. "I brought
all my electrical items, furniture and other possessions and moved
in barely a week ago. Today my wife, little daughter and I are without
anything," he said. Mano who witnessed
the terrifying slide is just thankful his life was spared. He says
he had almost given up hope of living when he saw the huge flood
of mud and rocks hurtling towards his house. He and his family have
now moved into a neighbour's house while Kumarihamy, her daughter
who is also a widow and her two children who lived together are
staying with a relative. Mallika Rajapakse's
home is a few feet away from the path of the landslide. She recollected
the fateful day. "There was a tremor and my house began to
shake. Then there was a huge sound like two planes colliding. I
came near the door to see what was happening and I could see big
rocks and mud hurtling down. I took my son and ran up the road.
I really thought we were finished." Grama Sevaka
of Puwakgahawela Indika Upendra is trying to do what he can to give
some relief to its inhabitants. "We are providing dry rations
to those affected and Rs. 10,000 has been given to the next of kin
of those who died," he said. He says many more lives would
have been lost if any vehicles had been plying on this stretch of
road when the earthslide occurred. Many of the
walls and floors of the houses in the vicinity too have been damaged
while large extents of paddy fields have been destroyed completely
along with tomato and pepper-growing land. What stands in place
of the small stream that used to trickle through the village is
a wide chasm of mud and rock. Villagers say that the landscape of
Puwakgahawela changed within the few minutes that the landslide
took its course. The Colombo-Badulla
highway being washed away at Pambahinaa has also left many stranded
on either side of the road. People are now taking the treacherous
route of climbing up the settled path of mud and rocks, climbing
down to the massive crater caused by the slide and climbing back
again to the other side to bypass this section of the road. All
vehicles plying on the road have to stop on either of the washed
out section and people have to wade across the thick layers of rock
and mud. The Road Development
Authority (RDA) and army personnel have been working round the clock
to rebuild this section of the road as soon as possible but the
issue of how stable the massive stones that have plunged down the
mountain, some of which are precariously balanced and the danger
they could pose to the villagers is of prime concern to them. On Thursday,
Karunawathie and Asela were laid to rest side by side in the village
cemetery. The impassable road did not deter villagers from making
the difficult walk to their funerals. Many had never met the deceased
mother and son, but this natural calamity had brought them closer
and they were sharing in the grief of their brethren. The funerals
of the two other victims whose bodies were recovered were being
held in a relative's home in an adjoining village. The likelihood
of finding the bodies of the other two victims is remote, army personnel
who were engaged in the search operation said. The road will be repaired; a new culvert put in place and life will slowly but surely return to normal. But whenever it rains heavily again, the frightening incidents of that Saturday will continue to haunt the villagers of Puwakgahawela for many years to come. Legacy of landslides He said he would rate this earthslide as a fairly big one but added that fortunately the number of human casualties was less than in earthslides of the 1980s and '90s. He said that the paddy fields that were washed away were lands that had been affected by slides thousands of years ago. Most landslides occur after three to four hours of continuous heavy rains, maybe upto about 100 to 200 millimetres. There is a mini earthquake and the movement of the earth starts at the low level and works itself upstream causing an intense precipitation underneath the earth and displacement of rocks. Landslides are always associated with water, he added. |
||||
Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers
Ltd. All rights reserved. |
hundreds
to the funeral home of D.M. Karunawathie Manike(54) and her son
K.S. Suranga Asela (22) who died together in the landslide.
University
who has been studying earthslides since 1977 says there is a need
to educate people living in landslide prone areas mainly in the
central highlands of their dangers.
