WHAT WILL THE GOVT. DO IF FLOODS CAME AGAIN?

With the inclement weather continuing for the past three months in various parts of the Wet Zone, the authorities have issued their habitual announcement to the people living downstream of rivers such as Kukule Ganga, Kalu Ganaga, Nilwala Ganga, Gin Ganga and Attanagalu Oya to be vigilant about the possibility of floods and landslides.

Although they may be doing so in good faith and out of concern about the people’s lives, practically it is the least that could be done for the safety of the people for two reasons. One is that they do it just like a ritual during the heavy rains without specifically guiding the people as to what they should do. The rainfall in millimeters and the water levels in rivers in feet do not make any sense to the ordinary people if those announcements are translated into specifically localized warnings.

Secondly, the majority of people who are vulnerable to possible floods or landslides do not have any place to go to by heeding the warnings and they could not run for their lives and those of their loved ones each time authorities warn. Because they could not leave their belongings to the mercy of the elements and fortunately most of the warnings had not been followed by disasters. So, they choose to put up with whatever may have to cope with in any way they can.

Another problem that has to be taken into account is that people in flood and landslide-prone areas have had very unpleasant experiences on the rescue and relief measures carried out by the authorities during the past disasters. Last year’s flood in the lower Kelani Valley areas was a case in point. It was the ordinary people and the voluntary organisations that bore the major share of responsibility of rescue and relief during that disaster. Even fishermen from Beruwala and Wattala had sent in their boats immediately to evacuate the victims until the navy launched their operations.

While showing on TV the shiploads of relief items being unloaded, the authorities provided only a package of essential food items worth Rs.1,500 (valued by them) for each affected family for the entire first two months after the tragedy, while getting the victims to fill so many forms with promises to pay compensation for their losses and damages.

It was after two months and after a poster campaign by the JVP demanding the payment that had been promised to cover their immediate needs that a sum of Rs.10,000 was provided to each family. However, authorities of religious places such as temples, churches, kovils and mosques in affected areas and people even from faraway places helped the victims to sustain their lives.

The promise of compensation for the losses was never kept. The experience on the preparedness, rescue and relief operations by the government during the floods in the Southern Province in May this year was not a far cry from what we witnessed during the previous tragedy in the lower Kelani Valley areas.

High-level meetings were held during last year’s disasters and politicians and officials waxed eloquent on short-term and long-term plans for the prevention of floods, especially in the Colombo District and mitigating landslide damages.they talked about removing unauthorised structures that hampered the waterways and the maintenance of those waterways, clearing of all canals in the downstream areas of Kelani Ganga, stopping forthwith the unauthorised filling of wetlands in Colombo and the suburbs.

However, nothing materialized. The same areas were on the verge of a similar tragedy in May this year as the Kelani River had started to overflow inundating roads in areas such as Avissawella, Hanwella and Kohilawatte. The disaster was averted not by any preventive measures taken by the authorities as they promised after the previous year’s mayhem, but because nature was not so furious. Nature’s rage and fury had turned to the South this time. Even after a massive flood and a near disaster two years in a row in the Kelani Valley and a similarly disastrous flood in the Galle, Matara and Kalutara Districts this year the government machinery does not seem to be moving towards lasting preventive measures.

It is high time for the authorities themselves as well as the civil society and the media to take stock of what really happened in respect of disaster mitigation and distribution of aid including that received from friendly countries.