A boy longs for his mum’s cuddle but she lies buried in the mud
State will take charge of 75 orphaned by mudslide
Huddled among the desks and chairs in the packed school serving as an evacuation centre, 12-year-old Theeban wishes with all his heart for his mother’s warmth.
He and his 14-year-old sister, Sewwandi, are among 75 children whose parents were killed or declared missing in Wednesday’s landslide at the Meeriyabedda estate in Haldumulla.
Theeban and his family were packed and ready to flee on Wednesday; seeing the mud flow around the linerooms they knew it was time to evacuate before a landslide hit.
As they were about to leave, his parents went back into the house to get their National Identity Cards. At that moment, tons of rocks and earth came crashing down on them.
As their grandparents screamed in warning, the brother and sister ran for their lives. Their parents, trapped in the house, were buried alive as the collapsing mountain slope engulfed the house.
Hopes are fading for the survival of the people still missing in the disaster.
“When we looked back there was only earth. Our house with Amma and Appa was completely under earth,” Sewwandi said.
The homes of 330 people living in the immediate path of the mudslide were destroyed.
The two children and their grandparents are now among 370 people sheltering at the Poonagala Tamil Maha Vidyalaya in Bandarawela, one of two main evacuation centres.
The government has decided the relatives of the 75 orphans will not be allowed to be adopt them. Instead, Minister Keheliya Rabukwella announced at the Cabinet briefing, “the government will take steps to ensure the children are looked after”.
The National Child Protection Authority has also been instructed to ensure the safety of these children is guaranteed. NCPA chairwoman Anoma Dissanayake said the children’s immediate need was psychosocial counselling and her officers would work on this.
In the other evacuation centre, the Sri Ganesha Tamil Maha Vidyalaya in Koslanda, where 522 individuals are sheltered, Thrishnan Puhuneshwari, 37, is still unable to accept the loss of her 14-year-old son.
A tea-plucker on the estate, she and her family lived in one of the line rooms that were swept away in the landslide.
“We do not know what happened to him. When the earth came down we all ran. My son ran with us too. But now he is missing. We want to know if he is dead or alive. He is the only son we have,” she said.
Nearby, Wasanthi Kumari, 28, is in shock, devastated by the death of her six-year-old daughter, Arumugam Nilushika. Kumari said when she had been first told of what happened to her daughter she had not believed a word of it.
“We found my daughter’s body yesterday,” Kumari said. “She had been on her way to school with our son, who is eight. She doesn’t like going to school when I am home but yesterday I made her go.” Kumari is employed in Colombo as a domestic help.
While her two children were on their way to school that morning they saw the mountain slope collapsing. Her son was able to grab on to a tree trunk but his sister was swept away. Some village boys brought her body to Kumari.
Kumari says that she wishes she could give her only daughter a proper burial – but everything is in chaos.
Her sister, Dana Lechchemi, blames the authorities for failing to give them adequate warning. “Our area was not directly affected but the children had to cross through the dangerous area to walk to school. Had we been told of the risk we wouldn’t have sent them to school,” she said.
By a stroke of fortune, the children of the Meeriyabadda estate escaped the disaster that struck the Welsh mining village of Aberfan on 21 October 1966 when a mountain of slurry collapsed, killing 119 children and 28 others. It was one of Britain’s worst tragedies.
The Meeriyabadda children survived because they were in school, away from the slide; the Aberfan children died because their school was in the path of the slide. It was the start of the school day, and the children had just finished singing “All things bright and beautiful”.
Just as the Koslanda slide was triggered by water, investigators found that the Aberfan coalmine operators had negligently tipped coal rubbish over a stream-course. The water running underneath, under pressure of the growing rubbish mountain, destabilised the heap and sent it sliding down onto a farm and the school.
A year later the author Laurie Lee visited Aberfan and found the villagers to be still in a state of shock, “perpetually telling and retelling the story”.
An official report in 1967 – the incident generated commissions of inquiry until 2000 – said the Welsh tragedy was a tale of “not of wickedness but of ignorance, ineptitude and a failure of communications”. It added: “The Aberfan Disaster is a terrifying tale of bungling ineptitude by many men charged with tasks for which they were totally unfitted, of failure to heed clear warnings, and of total lack of direction from above”.
It remains to be seen what the inquiries into the Koslanda landslide will find.
India and US have come forward to assist the government with over Rs 11 million worth of immediate relief and emergency humanitarian assistance. The Indian PM who conveyed his condolences over the Koslanda tragedy, announced Rs 5 million worth of immediate relief as emergency humanitarian assistance.
The High Commission of India also stated that the High Commissioner and Assistant High Commissioner in Kandy, will coordinate the provision of this relief assistance with government authorities. Furthermore, the Indian government is also exploring avenues for medium and long-term assistance options for the affected communities.
The US government too has provided US$ 50,000 (Rs 6.5 million) for emergency humanitarian assistance. The U.S. government, while extending its deepest condolences to the Sri Lanka government and the affected families, stated that they will coordinate with government authorities on any further assistance needed.
Meanwhile, the Maldivian and Pakistan governments also expressed their condolences to the families of the victims of the Koslanda landslide. The United Nations and the Humanitarian Community also issued statements expressing their sympathies regarding the loss of lives and missing persons, due to the landslides in the Haldumulla Division of Badulla district.