The army was scrambling in Sri Lanka on Thursday to try to find about 100 people buried by a mudslide on a tea plantation, but hopes of saving lives were slim.
Hundreds of rescuers, backed by diggers, were trying to break through the tons of mud that swept away some 150 tin houses on the plantation on Wednesday as most residents left for work or school.
“The rain is slowing down our work,” the region’s most senior officer, General Mano Perera, told reporters.
“The area is submerged by muddy water, so we have little hope of finding survivors,” he added. “There was no hard structure that could have acted as an air trap to survive.”
One grocer, Vevaratnam Marathamuttu, said he started running Wednesday morning to escape tons of dirt that were coming down from the mountain, fearing an explosion.
“I thought a bomb had exploded and I abandoned my shop,” Marathamuttu said. “I was saved because I fled.”
“There is nothing left in my life,” lamented truck driver Sinniah Yogarajan, who lost five family members and friends in the disaster.
“My whole neighborhood is gone. There is now a river of mud instead of houses,” he told AFP, near a school where refugees are housed.
A minister said he feared the disappearance of about 100 people, with rescuers having so far recovered only a few bodies.
“I went there. What I understood was that about 100 people were buried alive,” Mahinda Amaraweera, minister of disaster management, said by phone on Wednesday afternoon, returning from the Koslanda region.
As of Wednesday, the minister had revised down an initial death toll, with the number of missing persons actually at work or school.
fears of further flows
President Mahinda Rajapakse visited the site on Thursday to meet with survivors and inspect the Tea Plantation in Meeriyabedda, the site hardest hit by the mudslides.
Some 1,200 people from the surrounding plantations were evacuated from their homes as persistent rains raised fears of further landslides.
If the death toll were to reach 100, it would be the worst disaster since the tsunami that devastated Asia in December 2004, killing 31,000 people in Sri Lanka.
The hilly region of Sri Lanka is renowned for its Ceylon tea plantations and attracts many tourists who can spend the night in the middle of these plantations.
The plantation affected on Wednesday, however, was not a tourist site. The minister explained that the soils in the area had been made unstable by the torrential rains that fell for several days, forcing rescuers to work “cautiously”.
Parts of several national roads were also destroyed by the floods, a train was blocked by the fall of a piece of mountain on the railway tracks and traffic was disrupted on the single line that runs through these hills in the centre of the country.
The area is customary for mudslides. The authorities had issued numerous warnings asking residents to take shelter following the recent heavy monsoon rains.
At least 13 people had already died in mudslides in and around Colombo in June.
The monsoon season provides vital water for irrigation and electricity generation but is the cause of many deaths, and also often causes great damage.
