According to the government’s disaster management centre, the official death toll is 410, while 336 people are still missing. More than 64,000 people from 407,000 affected families are taking shelter in about 1,450 government-run security centers across the country.
Thousands of people stranded, isolated
Several countries have responded to Sri Lanka’s appeal for international aid, with India leading the way, followed by Britain, China, Australia and Nepal who have also offered help. Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has also declared a state of emergency to deal with the situation after the cyclone.
However, despite his announcement and promises of international aid, the Sri Lankan public is becoming increasingly frustrated with the state’s response. Authorities appear to be overwhelmed by rescue demands and are struggling to communicate in a timely manner as critics point to the absence of an integrated relief-and-rescue system.
Packiyasothi Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Colombo-based Center for Policy Alternatives, accused the Sri Lankan government of failing to heed warning signs and allowing the disaster to escalate beyond human control.
“The government has not performed well in handling the crisis and it should have urgently called on Parliament to review and strengthen disaster management policies,” Saravanamuttu told DW.
According to Saravanamuttu, “this disaster reveals significant gaps in preparedness and response mechanisms” and there is a need to evaluate existing frameworks “to prevent future failures.”
Early warnings went in vain
While Ditvaha made landfall in Sri Lanka on November 28, some say warning signs were already in place two weeks earlier. Experts say that the loss of life and property has increased due to the government not taking timely action.
“Unlike tsunamis, hydro-meteorological hazards like cyclones come with several days’ enough notice to take precautions. As early as November 12, Sri Lanka’s meteorological department had publicly flagged the possibility of extreme rainfall at the end of the month. This should have triggered a process of preparedness by the government at the central, provincial and local levels,” Nalaka Gunawardena, a science writer in Colombo, told DW.
“Apparently, this did not happen, and the official response when Cyclone Ditvaha was imminent or after its landfall has been mostly reactive,” Gunawardena said.
“The entire disaster management structure – from policymakers to state officials – must be held accountable for widespread failures that made a bad disaster even worse.”
Public interest lawyer and legal columnist Kishali Pinto-Jayawardene agrees that the outcome is “particularly appalling because the cyclone’s deadly impact was not realized until it was too late.”
He told DW that governments must have “the capacity and competence to take important decisions” in times of emergency.
“Emotional displays by politicians praising people for ‘coming together’ in times of crisis cannot replace that duty,” he said.
Rescue teams deployed ‘over capacity’
Shivanathan Navindra, a former member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who was involved in political activities after the conflict, said the cyclone had damaged roads and communication lines in northern Sri Lanka.
“The situation is extremely serious in North Mannar, Mullaitivu, Vavuniya and Kilinochchi districts. The collapse of telecom towers in Mullaitivu has resulted in complete blackout, leaving residents without phone or internet access,” Navindra told DW from Jaffna.
“The Northern Province is effectively cut off due to road closures, with travel between Vavuniya, Mullaitivu, Kilinochchi and Jaffna impossible,” he said.
Deputy Minister of Industry and Entrepreneurship Development Chaturanga Abeysinghe warned that rising water levels would make evacuations “extremely difficult”. He urged residents of Kelaniya riverbanks and flood-prone areas to evacuate.
“Cyclone Ditvah has caused enormous hardships, but the president has set up a task force to study the impact and arrange relief. Reconstruction will take some time,” Abeysinghe told DW.
“We had initial difficulty predicting the course of the cyclone,” Abeysinghe said, noting that significant rainfall was expected in many different areas, “stretching rescue teams beyond capacity to reach everyone in need.”
Abeysinghe also said the government was working on a war footing to reach out to the cut off vulnerable population.
The opposition held the government responsible for the loss of life and property.
However, government critics disagree with the official narrative. Opposition party Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) recently promised to initiate legal action against the government.
SJB MLA and spokesperson SM Marikar compared the severity of the disaster to the Easter Sunday suicide attacks, which killed about 270 people in 2019, and the recent economic collapse under the powerful Rajapaksa family.
“Like the criminal case filed against Rajapaksa for bankrupting the country, we will file a case against the present government as they are responsible for every citizen killed in the disaster,” Marikar told the media on Monday.
very few alerts in tamil language
Despite some relief supplies being delivered and emergency teams reaching some affected locations, many communities still lack clarity on when full help will arrive and when normality can be restored. One notable communication barrier, according to Sanjana Hattotuwa, a Colombo-based disinformation expert and analyst, is the choice of languages used by officials for disaster communications.
The nation officially recognizes both the majority language of Sinhala and the minor Tamil language, with English – a relic of the British colonial period – also spoken in varying degrees by about a quarter of its population.
“My research showed that the main updates were only in Sinhala, and sometimes reflected in English, but rarely, even in Tamil. State television and radio did not communicate about the risks and dangers, as was evident on social media,” Hattotuwa told DW.
“This contributed to an information void at critical hours, impacting preparedness and community responses,” he said. “If information had been available more effectively and timely, the lives now lost could have been saved.”
Edited by: Darko Janjevic
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