Heavy rain that began at about 3pm on Monday submerged the bus stand in Hatton town, and an earth slip later came down onto the Hatton–Nuwara Eliya main road at Kudagama, disrupting traffic on both.

Rainwater running along the main road caused severe disruption to traffic in the M.R. area of the town, Hiru News reported, citing its area correspondent.

A large volume of water came down into the bus stand from Gaminipura, the area immediately above it, and a risk of earth slipping has arisen at that location as a result.

Water also leaked into the accounts section of the Hatton Zonal Office, leaving officers working there in considerable difficulty.

Rubbish in the floodwater

The report carries an unusual detail about what worsened the blockage. Some traders who had come into Hatton from outside areas for the Deepavali festival threw bags of waste from their shops into the water flowing down the main road, and that refuse obstructed traffic along the route.

The earth slip at Kudagama

Later in the afternoon, a mound of earth collapsed onto the carriageway in the Hatton–Kudagama area of the Hatton–Nuwara Eliya main road, Hiru reported in a second filing. The area correspondent said traffic along the road was obstructed once the earth came down.

The two filings were published about 50 minutes apart, the flooding report at 4.40pm and the earth slip at 5.31pm.

Update, 10 November: the Hatton Oya burst its banks, and a swept-away lorry has been found

The flooding went considerably further than Monday afternoon’s two filings suggested.

The Hatton Oya, which carries water from Hatton down to the Mahaweli River, overflowed, and a lorry parked in the Rothes area was carried off by the current at about 5.00 p.m. on Monday, Hiru News reported on Tuesday morning. The vehicle’s owner found it in the early hours of Tuesday, lodged against a tree in the Hatton Oya.

Residents said about 50 houses in low-lying parts of Rothes were submerged. By Tuesday morning the water had drained out of the houses and occupants were clearing the standing water and mud left behind. Household goods and belongings in the affected homes were destroyed.

No injuries are reported in connection with either the lorry or the flooded houses.

Update, 10 November: a second flooded cluster at Pilihatara, and a cause residents name

The Daily Mirror has now filed its own account, and it describes a different part of Hatton from the one Hiru reported.

Around 30 houses in the Pilihatara area were submerged when the Hatton Oya overflowed on Monday, forcing residents to flee, the Daily Mirror reported at 10.55 a.m. on Tuesday under the byline of Ranjith Rajapaksa. Those affected were rescued with the help of neighbours and other local residents — no official agency is credited with the rescue.

Rainwater mixed with mud rose to a height of three to four feet inside the houses, destroying household goods and personal belongings.

Pilihatara is not Rothes. Hiru’s Tuesday filing put roughly 50 houses under water at Rothes, where the lorry was swept away; the Daily Mirror puts roughly 30 at Pilihatara. These read as two separate clusters along the same watercourse rather than two counts of one event, which would mean the number of homes flooded in Hatton on Monday is higher than either filing alone indicates. Neither outlet mentions the other locality, and no filing gives a town-wide total, so this desk does not add the two figures together.

Residents blame a blocked canal, and say it has happened before

The Daily Mirror supplies the first stated cause in any filing. Residents said the area had been repeatedly affected by flooding because of a blockage in a canal that flows into the Hatton Oya, which pushes water out into nearby houses. They urged the authorities to clear it to prevent further flooding.

That is a claim attributed to residents, not an engineering finding — no official, agency or survey is cited in support of it, and no authority is quoted in response. But it reframes Monday’s flooding as a recurring drainage failure rather than purely a rainfall event, and it echoes the maintenance argument running through this month’s Colombo flood coverage.

Context

The central hills are a separate weather system from the one that has dominated coverage over the past four days. Colombo and the Western Province were hit by flash floods on Friday, and an amber flood warning was issued for the Attanagalu Oya on Monday. The Met Department has warned that another atmospheric disturbance is developing over the Bay of Bengal.

The Hatton–Nuwara Eliya road runs through steep tea country and is among the routes most exposed to slope failure during sustained rain. Earlier this month the National Building Research Organisation issued landslide warnings across several hill districts.

Not reported

Neither filing gives a rainfall measurement for Hatton, reports any injuries, or says whether the road at Kudagama was closed outright or reduced to one lane. Neither names the agency clearing the earth slip, gives an estimate for when the road will reopen, or reports any NBRO assessment of the slip risk identified above the bus stand at Gaminipura. No evacuation or relief measure is mentioned.

Tuesday’s follow-up does not give a rainfall figure for Hatton either, does not say how many people were displaced or whether any relief has been provided to the 50 households, and does not report the condition of the recovered lorry or whether anyone was in or near it when it was carried off. It gives no update on the Kudagama earth slip or on the slip risk identified above the bus stand at Gaminipura.

The Daily Mirror’s Pilihatara filing does not give a rainfall figure either, does not say how many people were displaced from the 30 houses, and names no agency as responding. It does not identify the blocked canal, say when the blockage was first reported, or carry any response from the local authority, the Irrigation Department or the Nuwara Eliya district secretariat to the residents’ claim that the problem is recurring. It gives no account of the Rothes cluster or the swept-away lorry.

A note on sourcing, updated 10 November. This article originally recorded that no independent, non-Hiru account of the Hatton flooding existed. That is no longer the case: the Daily Mirror filed its own report on Tuesday morning, with a named reporter, and it covers a locality Hiru did not — so the event is now corroborated across two newsrooms, though each describes a different cluster and neither confirms the other’s figures. No NewsFirst account has been found.