COLOMBO, May 28, (APP/AFP): Emergency teams rushed
to distribute aid Sunday to half a million Sri Lankans displaced after the island’s worst flooding in more than a decade claimed 126 lives and left scores more missing.
Floodwaters were receding in some areas after a break in the rain,
giving authorities a chance to deliver much-needed supplies to victims who lost everything as torrents of water swept away their homes.
Many villages were still underwater Sunday, officials said. Medical
teams were dispatched to the worst-affected areas to help prevent an outbreak of waterborne diseases.
“We have the expertise to deal with this situation,” Health Minister
Rajitha Senaratne said, adding cholera and diarrhoea had been successfully
prevented in past floods.
Heavy rains on Friday triggered the worst flooding and landslides in
14 years in the southern and western parts of the island claiming at least 126 lives.
The official Disaster Management Centre said another 93 remained
missing as of Sunday morning while about 50 injured in landslides were hospitalised.
Senaratne said most of the victims were killed when mountain sides
collapsed on homes.
He said nearly 500,000 people were forced from their homes and most
of them had moved into temporary shelters.
The government withdrew an evacuation order for thousands of
residents in the southern district of Matara as water levels subsided.
“The threat of floods around the (river) Nilvala has subsided,”
irrigation department director M. Thuraisingham said.
“The flood levels near Colombo have also gone down because we did not
have rain in the past 24 hours.”
Water levels in Ratnapura, Sri Lanka’s gem district east of Colombo,
subsided but many villages in Kalutara, south of the capital, were still under water, officials said.