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Reign of earth
By Chandani Kirinde
The time was around 6.20 p.m. on Saturday, October 5. It had been raining heavily for the past three hours. S.B. Mano standing at the entrance of his new home, was looking at the rain lashing the mountains overlooking the Puwakgahawela village.

Destruction: Mano's house filled with earth. Pix by J.Weerasekera

What happened next was terrifying. He felt a sudden tremor, followed by what sounded like a huge explosion. A section of the mountain towering over the village was rolling down. He instinctively ran out and up the road as the sound got louder and louder. Within five minutes, all was quiet except for the sound of the rain.

But the landslide that occurred had taken its toll: six lives, several homes and hundreds of acres of paddy and other agricultural lands.

Five days after mother nature unleashed her fury on this sleepy and picturesque village in the Balangoda district, its inhabitants were making their way in their hundreds to the funeral home of D.M. Karunawathie Manike(54) and her son K.S. Suranga Asela (22) who died together in the landslide.

Their sealed coffins lay inside the small hall of their house about a kilometre away from where the tragedy happened. "Their bodies were bloated and barely recognisable when they were found," Karunawathie's older son Tusitha said sadly.

Karunawathie's only daughter Subhadra Kalyani is expecting her second baby next month. She had been informed of the tragedy only two days after the incident -after the bodies were recovered.

"I live in another village. My husband didn't want me to hear the news because of the condition I am in. I can't believe my mother and brother are gone," she said.

Karunawathie and her son had been at the tomato plot they cultivate when the landslide began. It is likely they were inside the wooden hut and unable to leave because of the heavy downpour.

The other victims were four members of the same family who had been swept away with their entire home. Only two of their bodies have been recovered, one about four kilometres away close to the Samanalawewa dam - that of a five-month-old baby and the other of the mother. The baby's grandmother and another family member were also killed.

S.M.S.Kumarihamy (76), said her entire five bed-roomed house had been buried by the landslide. She had taken her grandson for a tuition class and had sought shelter in a nearby boutique because of the heavy rain.

"I wanted to come home but it was raining very hard. If I had come, my grandson and I would have both been dead today," she said.

Kumarihamy has been living in the village for 60 years but this is the first time such a landslide had occurred as far as she can remember.

"I have been left homeless. My husband is no more. Our entire savings were spent to build this house," she lamented.

The house next to hers, owned by her daughter had been given on rent to S.B. Mano, the General Manager of the Greenwood Holiday Inn- Badulla eight days earlier. Although the house is still standing, its windows are shattered and the house is swamped in mud.

"I brought all my electrical items, furniture and other possessions and moved in barely a week ago. Today my wife, little daughter and I are without anything," he said.

Mano who witnessed the terrifying slide is just thankful his life was spared. He says he had almost given up hope of living when he saw the huge flood of mud and rocks hurtling towards his house. He and his family have now moved into a neighbour's house while Kumarihamy, her daughter who is also a widow and her two children who lived together are staying with a relative.

Mallika Rajapakse's home is a few feet away from the path of the landslide. She recollected the fateful day. "There was a tremor and my house began to shake. Then there was a huge sound like two planes colliding. I came near the door to see what was happening and I could see big rocks and mud hurtling down. I took my son and ran up the road. I really thought we were finished."

Grama Sevaka of Puwakgahawela Indika Upendra is trying to do what he can to give some relief to its inhabitants. "We are providing dry rations to those affected and Rs. 10,000 has been given to the next of kin of those who died," he said. He says many more lives would have been lost if any vehicles had been plying on this stretch of road when the earthslide occurred.

Many of the walls and floors of the houses in the vicinity too have been damaged while large extents of paddy fields have been destroyed completely along with tomato and pepper-growing land. What stands in place of the small stream that used to trickle through the village is a wide chasm of mud and rock. Villagers say that the landscape of Puwakgahawela changed within the few minutes that the landslide took its course.

The Colombo-Badulla highway being washed away at Pambahinaa has also left many stranded on either side of the road. People are now taking the treacherous route of climbing up the settled path of mud and rocks, climbing down to the massive crater caused by the slide and climbing back again to the other side to bypass this section of the road. All vehicles plying on the road have to stop on either of the washed out section and people have to wade across the thick layers of rock and mud.

The Road Development Authority (RDA) and army personnel have been working round the clock to rebuild this section of the road as soon as possible but the issue of how stable the massive stones that have plunged down the mountain, some of which are precariously balanced and the danger they could pose to the villagers is of prime concern to them.

On Thursday, Karunawathie and Asela were laid to rest side by side in the village cemetery. The impassable road did not deter villagers from making the difficult walk to their funerals. Many had never met the deceased mother and son, but this natural calamity had brought them closer and they were sharing in the grief of their brethren.

The funerals of the two other victims whose bodies were recovered were being held in a relative's home in an adjoining village.

The likelihood of finding the bodies of the other two victims is remote, army personnel who were engaged in the search operation said.

The road will be repaired; a new culvert put in place and life will slowly but surely return to normal. But whenever it rains heavily again, the frightening incidents of that Saturday will continue to haunt the villagers of Puwakgahawela for many years to come.

Legacy of landslides
Professor Kapila Dahanayake, Senior Professor of Geology at the Peradeniya University who has been studying earthslides since 1977 says there is a need to educate people living in landslide prone areas mainly in the central highlands of their dangers.

He said he would rate this earthslide as a fairly big one but added that fortunately the number of human casualties was less than in earthslides of the 1980s and '90s. He said that the paddy fields that were washed away were lands that had been affected by slides thousands of years ago. Most landslides occur after three to four hours of continuous heavy rains, maybe upto about 100 to 200 millimetres. There is a mini earthquake and the movement of the earth starts at the low level and works itself upstream causing an intense precipitation underneath the earth and displacement of rocks. Landslides are always associated with water, he added.


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