A total of 2,331 people from 581 families across five divisional secretariat divisions in the Nuwara Eliya district have been affected by the current spell of severe weather, District Secretary Thushari Tennakoon said on Monday.
Six people were missing as of about 4.00 p.m., she said, and three others have been injured in weather-related incidents.
Hiru News reported the District Secretary as breaking the missing down into two people caught in floodwater and four buried by landslides.
More than 1,700 in relief centres
Seven safety centres have been opened across the district for those forced out of their homes. The number sheltering in them was given as 1,743 people from 439 families by Hiru News; Ada Derana put the figure at 1,734. Relief and rescue operations were continuing on Monday evening as officials monitored conditions.
Nuwara Eliya has borne the heaviest rainfall of the current wet spell. Watawala recorded 204 mm in the 24 hours to 6.00 a.m. on Monday — the highest figure in the country — followed by Norton at 187.8 mm, with Hatton, Hunugalaoya, Kotagala and Nanu Oya all above 130 mm.
The incidents behind the figures
The district’s missing include four people who were in a house at Morahenagama, Polpitiya, when an earth mound collapsed onto it at about 1.30 p.m. Army troops recovered the body of a woman from the site later in the afternoon and were still searching for the others.
Elsewhere in the district, Army personnel from the 56 Infantry Brigade headquarters at Kotagala rescued 24 families cut off after the Hatton Oya burst its banks at Ginigathhena Blackwater, along with estate workers trapped by floodwater at the Hatton Kotagala Commercial, Loghill and Mayfield estates.
Warnings still in force
Ambagamuwa and Norwood, the divisions around Hatton, are among the areas under National Building Research Organisation landslide warnings. All government schools in the Nuwara Eliya and Kandy districts are closed on Tuesday, and the Ministry of Defence has ordered officials to activate village-level disaster committees.
The Met Department expects the rain to ease from Tuesday afternoon, with a fresh spell from August 6 as a typhoon strengthens the southwest monsoon.
