Nearly 30,000 houses in Sri Lanka stand in high-risk landslide zones in a condition that requires relocation, the National Building Research Organisation says.
Senior Scientist Wasantha Senadeera said 16,746 of those homes are ones affected by the Ditwah disaster, and that they too sit in high-risk zones, NewsFirst reported on Tuesday morning.
Senadeera said the houses are at a level where they must be evacuated, and that the process of providing alternative land plots to residents has already begun.
A structural figure, not a weather warning
The 30,000 total is a different kind of number from the landslide warnings the NBRO issues during heavy rain. Those name districts at risk during a specific rain event and lapse when the weather clears. This figure describes the standing housing stock judged unsafe regardless of current conditions.
The Ditwah subtotal accounts for a little over half of it. Cyclone Ditwah struck in November 2025, and the NBRO has since classified affected areas into high, medium and low-risk zones, with high-risk areas further split into three priority tiers for compensation payments through Divisional Secretariats. Tuesday’s figures appear to draw on that same classification, though NewsFirst did not say so.
The implication of the split is that roughly 13,000 of the at-risk houses were identified independently of Ditwah — but NewsFirst did not state that directly, and the organisation did not say when the wider assessment was carried out.
What was not reported
NewsFirst did not name the districts involved, break the 30,000 down by province, or say how the figure was arrived at. It gave no timeline for the relocations, no cost, and no indication of how many households have already been given alternative land.
It did not say whether relocation is compulsory or voluntary, what happens to residents who decline, or whether the programme is funded from the Ditwah compensation scheme or separately. Nor did it report how the 16,746 Ditwah-affected houses relate to the compensation priority tiers already in place.
Single-source
NewsFirst is so far the only verified newsroom to carry the figures. Ada Derana, Hiru News, the Daily Mirror and Colombo Gazette had nothing on the NBRO statement at the time of writing, and no NBRO release accompanying it has been published.
Note that NewsFirst rendered the cyclone’s name “Ditwa”; it is spelt Ditwah in Sri Lankan reporting generally and in this site’s earlier coverage.
