All four people trapped when an earth mound collapsed onto a house at Polpitiya in Hatton have been found dead, Polpitiya police said on Monday night, closing out a search that ran through the afternoon and evening.
Four people — three women and one man — were in the house in the Morahenagama area of the Polpitiya police division when the earth gave way at about 1.30 p.m. during heavy rain, police said. Troops from the 19th National Security Forces Headquarters recovered the body of a woman first. Rescue teams later recovered the bodies of two more women and the male victim from the debris, Ada Derana and Hiru News reported.
The first victim recovered was an 82-year-old woman, according to the Daily Mirror.
The toll was revised repeatedly through the day. Early reports put it at one dead and four missing, then one dead and three missing after the first recovery, before police confirmed all four occupants had died.
The collapse is the deadliest single incident of the current wet spell. A man was also killed at Solankanda in Nawalapitiya earlier in the day when an embankment gave way.
Nuwara Eliya District Secretary Thushari Tennakoon said six people were missing across the district as of 4.00 p.m., of whom two were swept away by flood water at Ambagamuwa. The remaining four were the occupants of the Polpitiya house, whose recovery accounts for the balance of that district-wide figure. She put the number affected at 2,331 people from 581 families.
Army rescues 24 families nearby
Sri Lanka Army personnel rescued 24 families cut off by flooding in the Kotagala and Ginigathhena Blackwater areas on Monday afternoon and moved them to safer ground, Ada Derana reported.
The flooding followed the Hatton Oya — which flows from Hatton towards Nawalapitiya — bursting its banks and inundating a line of estate houses at Ginigathhena Blackwater. Troops from the 56 Infantry Brigade headquarters at Kotagala carried out the operation after reports that residents were trapped by rising water.
Families were evacuated from the Ginigathhena Blackwater Estate, the Hatton Kotagala Commercial Estate, Loghill Estate and Mayfield Estate.
A district under warning
Hatton sits in the Nuwara Eliya district, one of four districts where the National Building Research Organisation has landslide early warnings in force. Rainfall at Watawala, a short distance away, reached 204 mm in the 24 hours to Monday morning.
Earlier in the day the Dik Oya overflowed and flooded houses in the Hatton area, and main roads across the hill country were closed by rockfalls and floodwater. Schools across the Nuwara Eliya and Kandy districts are shut, and the Ministry of Defence has ordered officials to activate village-level disaster committees and prepare evacuation centres.
The Met Department expects the rain to ease from Tuesday afternoon.
