Cyclone Ditwah has devastated Sri Lanka, leaving at least 334 people dead and more than 400 missing. Twenty of the country’s 25 districts have seen neighbourhoods buried under mud as Sri Lanka faces one of its worst natural disasters in recent decades.
Over 20,000 homes in districts including Kandy, Badulla, Nuwara Eliya, Matale and Anuradhapura have been destroyed, forcing about 108,000 people into government-run temporary shelters. The hardest-hit areas include Gampaha, Colombo, Puttalam, Mannar, Trincomalee and Batticaloa, while deadly landslides in the central hill country have devastated Kandy, Badulla and Matale.
“20 out of the 25 districts in Sri Lanka have been severely affected by Ditwah. This is the first such devastation the country has faced in the past three decades. The administration is working in full swing,” a senior disaster management official told THE WEEK from Colombo.
Several fatalities have been reported in the tea estates of Nuwara Eliya and Kandy, and Matale and Badulla continue to struggle with severe mudslides. More than 1.1 million people have been affected overall, and over 200,000 have been displaced to temporary shelters.
“A third of the country is running without electricity and water. Rescue and relief measures have turned very difficult as the devastation is more than what we expected. The cyclone has brought multiple landslides in the hilly areas, making the rescue and relief operations very challenging,” the official said.
Damage assessment has been hampered as many dwellings, particularly the line rooms housing large numbers of estate workers in Nuwara Eliya, collapsed or were buried under soil. More than 24,000 army and police personnel have been deployed for rescue operations, working to reach families stranded by floods and landslides.
Nuwara Eliya is reported to be extensively damaged, while Kandy, home to the famed tooth relic temple, remains flooded though rains have eased. Over 200 roads are impassable, more than 10 bridges and parts of the rail network are damaged, and the national power grid has been affected, plunging large areas into darkness. Flooding along the Kelani River, which flows through Colombo and nearby low-lying areas, has caused major damage and complicated relief efforts.
On Saturday, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake declared a state of emergency and appealed for international assistance, saying in a televised address that “every life lost is not merely a number. Every life carried a name, a face, and a story.”
International aid agencies are on the ground, and India was the first to respond with “Operation Sagar Bandhu.” India sent IAF aircraft carrying relief materials. Chetak helicopters from INS Vikrant airlifted stranded people to safety, while MI-17 helicopters from the Indian Air Force conducted search-and-rescue near inaccessible areas such as Kotmale, rescuing pregnant women, infants and the critically injured. IAF helicopters rescued people of many nationalities, including Sri Lankan, Indian, German, Slovenian, British, South African, Polish, Belarusian, Iranian, Australian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi nationals, and airlifted Sri Lankan Army personnel to landslide-affected regions.
National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams from India carried out rescue operations in Kochikade, Colombo, and have been working in Puttalam and Badulla, assisting families affected by severe flooding. Around 750 Indian passengers have been evacuated from Sri Lanka to Thiruvananthapuram and later to other Indian cities.
“It will take several years for us to come out of the damage caused by Cyclone Ditwah. The administration was not prepared to handle such devastation. The government did not anticipate this,” the official added.
