Army troops have recovered the body of a woman from a house buried by an earth mound at Polpitiya in Hatton, and three other people who were inside remain missing, police said on Monday.

Four people — three women and one man — were in the house in the Morahenagama area of the Polpitiya police division when the earth gave way at about 1.30 p.m. during heavy rain, Polpitiya police said. Troops from the 19th National Security Forces Headquarters recovered one woman’s body during the afternoon and were continuing to search for the others into the evening.

Earlier reports on Monday had put the toll at one dead and four missing. Ada Derana revised that to one dead and three missing after the recovery.

It is the second death from an earth collapse in the central hills on Monday, after a man was killed at Solankanda in Nawalapitiya earlier in the day. Both deaths are counted in the district-wide toll released by the Nuwara Eliya District Secretary, who said six people were missing across the district as of 4.00 p.m.

Army rescues 24 families nearby

Sri Lanka Army personnel rescued 24 families cut off by flooding in the Kotagala and Ginigathhena Blackwater areas on Monday afternoon and moved them to safer ground, Ada Derana reported.

The flooding followed the Hatton Oya — which flows from Hatton towards Nawalapitiya — bursting its banks and inundating a line of estate houses at Ginigathhena Blackwater. Troops from the 56 Infantry Brigade headquarters at Kotagala carried out the operation after reports that residents were trapped by rising water.

Families were evacuated from the Ginigathhena Blackwater Estate, the Hatton Kotagala Commercial Estate, Loghill Estate and Mayfield Estate.

A district under warning

Hatton sits in the Nuwara Eliya district, one of four districts where the National Building Research Organisation has landslide early warnings in force. Rainfall at Watawala, a short distance away, reached 204 mm in the 24 hours to Monday morning.

Earlier in the day the Dik Oya overflowed and flooded houses in the Hatton area, and main roads across the hill country were closed by rockfalls and floodwater. Schools across the Nuwara Eliya and Kandy districts are shut, and the Ministry of Defence has ordered officials to activate village-level disaster committees and prepare evacuation centres.

The Met Department expects the rain to ease from Tuesday afternoon.