Editorial

Like a thief at night, Cyclone Ditwah came and devastated countless homes and property to the tune of billions, leaving a trail of destruction rarely seen before in living memory. It was quick; it was savage. It left 611 dead, 213 still missing—and still counting.

The difference, however, was that it didn’t come stealthily unannounced. It telegraphed its arrival, ringing all the bells. Cyclonic havoc had already hit parts of Indonesia (Aceh province) and southern Thailand—the same areas that were struck, like Sri Lanka’s coastal area, by the 2004 tsunami. Parts of Malaysia and Vietnam were also affected last week.

Climate change is known to have altered the annual monsoon weather patterns (up to October) that bring unusual rainfall, triggering landslides and flash floods. The Meteorological Department issued early warning signals through its weather forecasts of heavy rain and of depressions that can cause cyclonic weather, but these were somewhat broad and vague, not really a sufficient straightforward red alert to wake up the sleepy authorities or the politicians, the latter distracted by an Opposition rally and trying to neutralise it.

Yet, the telltale signs were very clear. The Irrigation Department personnel saw with their own eyes the rivers rising and decided to open the sluice gates from the numerous dams. Releasing these waters requires a delicate balance, and in deciding how much water to release, why were the people downstream not warned? Boulders had begun toppling onto the rail track, suspending trains to Badulla, and a landslide at Kadugannawa above the main road to Kandy should have been ample sign not just for a geologist but any reasonable person in authority that the earth was shifting. These were the areas that were hit the hardest, eventually.

For these reasons, the Government stands accused of being caught flat-footed. That disaster management is also a subject now brought under the Defence Ministry rather than a portfolio of its own as it was before is a pointer to the ruling party hierarchy giving it less importance than it merits.

Many years ago, the Geotechnical Society of Sri Lanka (est. 1984), which often has to deploy its members after each mudslide, wanted the emphasis on prevention and suggested changing the name of the Disaster Management Authority to Disaster Mitigation Authority. Governments in the past that only reacted to a calamity rather than being proactive ignored these calls by professionals who know best. On page 8 we carry the numerous reports of the sheer bungling of setting up the early warning systems ordered post-tsunami. What follows is the well-worn narrative of incompetence and then crying for international help and an SOS with the Treasury bank account made public, appealing for foreign aid to flow in.

A government minister was to blame decades of illegal housing and construction of hotels on irrigation tanks and mountaintops that have been permitted by corrupt local councils as a cause for the loss of lives. That is true. But it is of little solace to the thousands who have been the victims, with the obliteration of entire hamlets in the hill country.

What has happened has happened. Postmortems and the blame game will continue, no doubt. As the Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, apologising for the destruction in his country, said, “It’s always the Prime Minister’s fault.” It is no different with all incumbents in office, and still, it was welcome to hear President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, short of an apology, thanking the public servants and the armed forces whom he and his government have consistently disparaged since coming to power for being the first responders when the country was engulfed in water and mud.

Also welcome was his call for bipartisanship on the political front. His opponents say this is to stop his government from being criticised and point to the unleashing of the CID against selective political opponents during the entire year they have been in office. The government’s refusal to give the opposition time to debate the issue was not the best start, and the UNP has fired a salvo referring to the post-tsunami National Disaster Plan of 2005 not being put into operation. The inexperienced government’s late reaction to the crisis, sending public servants on leave after the cyclone had struck, resulting in critical instructions not filtering to the rural areas that were ultimately worst affected, is also being criticised.

Expecting opposition parties not to take advantage of the people’s anger is to expect them to behave like political neophytes. As long as they are not obstructionists. Asking foreign donors not to send funds to the beleaguered Treasury—as the ruling party did when in opposition—ought to be out of order. The Government has, in the meantime, been caught off-guard, not having an Auditor General in office to account for the foreign funds coming into the national kitty.

Peoples of all nations, like in Sri Lanka, come together in times of national calamities. The miseries of the people of Gaza or of war-torn Ukraine may be a pointer to the importance of resilience and working together. Those in Southeast Asia are also getting up from Cyclone Ditwah.

The need to roll up sleeves and get down to the task of rebuilding must now take precedence over everything else. It has been done before, but climate change is making natural disasters more frequent and more ferocious around the world. Our absence at high-level from COP30, the UN conference on climate change, only last month shows how the Government has underplayed the importance of the subject. As Britain’s King Charles says in his message of sympathy, “These disasters remind us of the increasingly urgent need to restore the balance and harmony of Nature.”

This is not the last time Sri Lanka is going to be hit by a natural calamity. To gag the Met Department from speaking to the media will not help the government to put things right. Whether the President plans to have a quiet word with any blabbermouth deputies threatening media critics raises familiar questions: is the government planning to unleash the emergency regulations promulgated for mop-up and rebuild operations against its critics?

As one of our columnists says (on page 12), “Nature will not wait for Sri Lanka to get its systems right.” Disaster mitigation must be made a separate ministry. The magnitude of these disasters as they come now is a barometer that proves beyond any doubt the importance of planning and putting in place preventive measures that are going to be crucial going forward—to the full recovery—and facing the next disaster.