Three people were injured and taken to hospital when a tree fell on vehicles parked in the car park behind the Nawagamuwa Pattini Devalaya on Sunday evening.
Police said the three vehicles struck sustained severe damage, Hiru News reported at 5.54 p.m. The injured were admitted to hospital. No deaths were reported.
The Nawagamuwa Pattini Devalaya, on the Low Level Road east of Colombo, is one of the most visited shrines in the country and draws large numbers of devotees on Sundays, when its car park is typically full.
The weather behind it
The incident falls in the middle of the wet spell that has dominated the past several days. The Department of Meteorology had warned of falls above 100mm and a disturbance developing over the Bay of Bengal, and the same system has produced flooding across Colombo, spill-gate releases on the Nilwala and at Udawalawe and, in Matara district, four deaths in a stream at Deniyaya.
Saturated ground is the mechanism that connects heavy rain to falling trees: prolonged rainfall loosens the soil around root plates, and a tree that has stood through years of ordinary weather can go over in wind that would not otherwise move it. A tree came down on the main line at Polgahawela earlier this month, and in June three people were killed when a tree crushed a three-wheeler at Nawalapitiya.
Not reported
Hiru does not name those injured, give their ages or state the severity of their injuries beyond the fact of hospitalisation, and does not identify the hospital. It does not say what types of vehicle were struck, whether anyone was inside them, or what time the tree came down. It gives no account of the tree’s size or condition, says nothing about whether wind or saturated ground brought it down, and does not report whether the temple’s car park has been closed or inspected.
Other outlets reporting the same incident describe a larger number of vehicles damaged than the three Hiru reports. Those filings could not be independently verified for this report, and this desk reports the figure given by the newsroom it was able to confirm.
This report rests on a single verified newsroom.
