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When the rains began, Layani Rasika Niroshani was not worried. The 36-year-old mother of two was used to the heavy monsoon showers that drench Sri Lanka’s hilly central region of Badulla every year. But as it kept pounding down without stopping, the family started to feel jittery.
Some relocated to a relative’s house, but her brother and his wife decided to stay behind to collect the valuables. As they were inside, a landslide hit the family home.
“By some miracle, my brother managed to pull her out of the house through a broken window,” said Niroshani. “They weren’t able to take a single thing out. We were all very scared.”
The house was destroyed as it was engulfed with mud and debris, taking all their family possessions with it; one of hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed by Cyclone Ditwah, the worst natural disaster to hit Sri Lanka in decades. By late Monday, the death toll across the island was confirmed as 366. In Badulla alone, 71 people were confirmed dead and a further 53 were still missing.
“Our home was buried under the earth,” said Niroshani. She and fellow villagers had spent the past two days digging in the mud, trying to salvage any of their belongings, but only managing to retrieve a few kitchen pots and some clothes.
“My family is in shock. We have to rebuild from scratch. Sometimes that’s even worse than living,” she said.
The scale of the damage caused by Cyclone Ditwah is still unclear, but in a speech on Sunday night, Sri Lanka’s president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, described it as the “largest and most challenging natural disaster in our history”. Villages across the island were decimated and many homes, schools and businesses still remained under water on Monday, including across the capital Colombo. Helicopters were dispatched to the worst-affected areas to try to drop food and other essential supplies to those stranded.
According to the country’s Disaster Management Centre, more than 1.1 million people had been affected by the cyclone’s impact. As the country’s emergency and rescue services were overwhelmed, the military was deployed to help rescue efforts.
Kantharuban Prashanth, 32, a school teacher, said he was helping to shelter more than 125 families at a school in Badulla who had been displaced in the flooding since Thursday.
“They are very vulnerable and in need of help for about four days now,” he said. “All we received were dry rations that we cook here in the school. All of them share just one toilet. But these families can’t return to their homes because it is not safe. There are cracks in their homes, it is very risky to go back there. We need help.”
The damage wrought on Sri Lanka was particularly devastating for the island of 22 million people, which is still recovering from economic collapse in 2022 that left the country bankrupt and restricted access to even basic foods and medicine. Sri Lanka also relies heavily on western tourism as a vital source of income and the industry seems likely to have been hit hard by the impact of the cyclone.
Officials have warned that the death toll could still rise, with more than 360 people still missing and some areas still yet to be accessed by rescue teams. Further rain is also forecast for this week, which could further exacerbate the flooding.
Siriyalatha Adhikari, a 74-year-old living in Biyagama in western Sri Lanka, said she had lost everything in the cyclone. “We didn’t have time to remove anything from the house. Everything happened so fast. Our whole house was under water, we didn’t think it would flood so quickly,” she said.
In Ratnapura, a city in a southern district which was among the areas worst hit, small rescue boats traversed the flood waters, helping people stranded on rooftops and trees. Many complained they had been given no warning to evacuate, despite the threat of rising rivers as the cyclone brought on heavy rains.
JA Nilanthi, 45, said her family had watched as the Kalu river in Ratnapura started to rise dangerously on Thursday, until it broke its banks. She said they had received no warning from officials or orders to relocate, even as the water hit dangerously high levels.
“We didn’t sleep the whole night because it was raining continuously. No one told us to evacuate. Around six in the morning when families in the village started packing and leaving their homes we did too,” she said.
The only thing her family managed to move from the house before it flooded was the fridge. For the next two days, they all sheltered on the roof of an empty house. “We were on the top of this house for two days with flood water on either side of the house. We were trapped there. We didn’t have anything to eat, not even a drop of water,” she said. “I have never been this scared my whole life.”
The water started to subside on Sunday and Nilanthi’s family went back to see what remained of their home. When they arrived, they were horrified. “We went home, nothing was left. Our sofa, cupboards, plates, and even our clothes – all covered in thick mud,” said Nilanthi. “Life ahead is tough but I am thankful we managed to get to safety in time.”
