One plantation worker has been killed and seven others injured in a wasp attack at Waltrim Estate, Lindula, on Monday (21).
Eight workers were on the job when a wasp nest attached to a tree in the tea field was suddenly disturbed, the Daily Mirror reported. The disturbance happened amid the adverse weather now covering the district.
The man who died was 77 years old, a father of three, and a resident of the Len Thomas division of Waltrim Estate. His body has been taken to Nuwara Eliya District General Hospital for a post-mortem examination.
The seven injured workers were treated at Lindula Regional Hospital and have since been discharged.
The weather is part of the story
The Daily Mirror ties the disturbance of the nest directly to the conditions in the hill country, and those conditions are severe. Lindula sits in the Nuwara Eliya district, four of whose divisional secretariat divisions — Norwood, Ambagamuwa, Kotmale East and Kotmale West — are currently under the NBRO’s top-tier Red landslide warning. The Met Department has forecast more than 100 mm of rain across Nuwara Eliya, with the heaviest falls expected on slopes.
Heavy rain and wind dislodge and expose nests, and drive colonies to defend them. Plantation work continues through it, in the open, among the same trees.
The third hill-country attack in under a month
This is the third such incident on the plantations in four weeks, and the pattern is consistent enough to be worth stating plainly:
- 27 August — Maskeliya. Ten workers, four women and six men, were admitted to Maskeliya Regional Hospital after a hornet nest was disturbed during a religious ceremony at an estate kovil. Read more
- 31 August — Hatton. Seventeen tea workers, sixteen of them women, were admitted to Dickoya Base Hospital after a wasp nest was disturbed at Raja Estate. Read more
- 21 September — Lindula. Eight workers attacked; one dead, seven treated and discharged.
Maskeliya, Hatton and Lindula lie within a short radius of one another in the central highlands. The August attacks produced hospitalisations and no reported deaths; Monday’s produced a fatality.
The severity difference is not explained by the number stung — Lindula’s eight is the smallest group of the three. The man who died was also the oldest victim recorded in any of the three incidents. Neither the Daily Mirror nor the earlier reporting gives a cause of death, and none is established until the post-mortem.
Not reported
The Daily Mirror does not name the deceased, say how long the attack lasted, or record how many stings he received or whether he died at the scene or in hospital. It does not say what work the group was doing, whether estate management had been warned about the nest, or whether the plantation company has commented.
No outlet reports whether the plantation sector has issued any guidance on nests during the current spell of heavy weather — the question the run of August and September attacks now raises.
