Bad Weather Coming...Sri Lanka Floods

[the_future_modernes]

Sri Lanka has also been having some BAAADDDDDD issues with flooding in the last several months.

* Over 2,200 people displaced again by floods and landslides in Sri Lanka

Feb 02, Colombo: While Sri Lanka's north central and eastern parts are struggling to return to normalcy after the recent floods that wreaked havoc in the region another round of heavy rains have set back the recovery efforts.

Sri Lanka's Disaster Management Center (DMC) has reported that 2,271 people from 636 families have been displaced due to the adverse weather conditions experienced in the country currently.

A total of 2,862 people from 738 families have been affected by the heavy rains and landslides in several parts of the country.

Two deaths, a child from Vavuniya and another from Ambawaka on the Badulla-Nuwara Eliya road, have also been reported.

Nearly half of the displaced, 1,011 are in Trincomalee District while another 945 have been displaced in Vavuniya district. The displaced have been given shelter in 11 welfare camps set up by the government in the two districts.MORE

This comes after the worst flood in the country's history earlier this year:

SRI LANKA: East Reels Under Triple Whammy Jan 27

MAVILARU, Jan 27, 2011 (IPS) - The name Mawilaru will be indelibly linked to the history of over 25 years of civil strife in Sri Lanka, especially its bloody end. It was here that the final phase of the war was triggered in June 2006.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), fighting for a separate state for the island’s minority Tamils, closed an important sluice gate here depriving water to farmers from the majority Sinhala community who lived north of the gate. Then, after a few weeks of posturing, the government launched a military operation and gained control of the gate. The operation to regain Mawilaru would set off a series of other far larger military operations that would end the LTTE presence in the country by mid May 2009.

Recently there was yet another military intervention at the sluice gates. This time soldiers were brought in to battle nature. When floodwaters rose to alarming levels - threatening to burst from the sides of the Mawilaru canal - soldiers reinforced the banks with sandbags.

Unfortunately, the floodwaters found other routes, crashing through paddy fields, roads, bridges and anything that stood in its path. The waters from the Mahaweli, the country’s longest river that flows through the region, and the incessant heavy rains from Jan. 8 till 11 cut off some villages for over five days.

"It was battle alright, a battle we lost," Ponnambalam Thanesveran, the top public official at Verugal, a nearby village, told IPS.

Thanesveran was stuck in his office for five days and was forced to work from the second floor as floodwaters inundated the ground floor in six feet of water. He arrived and left the office building by boat while coordinating the relief effort for his divisional secretariat, all the time wearing a life jacket. "What we gained in the last three years has been washed away, we are probably worse off than we were in 2006," he said. MORE

Sri Lankan floods could leave 400,000 children without enough food:Worst floods in country's recent history have destroyed homes, schools and agricultural land

As the floodwaters begin to recede, many of the 350,000 displaced people driven into temporary refugee camps are returning home only to find that their homes, schools, crops and livelihoods have been wiped out by the rains.

In the worst-affected part of the country, the Eastern Province, the damage to agricultural land could leave up to 1 million people, including 400,000 children, without enough food, Save the Children said.

Sri Lanka's agricultural ministry reported that 21% of the country's rice crop had been destroyed.

The warning came as the UN launched an urgent $51m (£31m) appeal for victims of the floods – the worst in recent history – which have killed dozens and destroyed thousands of homes and vital clean water sources.

More than 1 million people in the country are affected, with over half estimated to be facing food shortages and the threat of waterborne disease.

It is an enormous setback for an area that was only just beginning to recover from the decades-long war and the 2004 tsunami which killed 400,000 people and left 2.5 million homeless.

"The average ten-year-old in eastern Sri Lanka has lived through conflict, the tsunami and now risks facing a food crisis in the coming weeks caused by these floods," Gareth Owen, Save the Children's emergencies director, said.MORE

Lankan economy to be marred by floods and droughts in future

Of the top ten natural disasters from 1900 to 2011 affecting the most number of people in Sri Lanka, four have been floods (1969, 1983, 1989, 2003), four were droughts (1982, 1987, 1988, 2001), one,a storm (1978) and the 2004 Tsunami (Figure 1). Of the top ten natural disasters causing the most economic damage during the same period, seven were floods (1966, 1967, 1969, 1989, 1991, 1992, 2003), two, storms (1964, 1978) and the 2004 tsunami (Figure 1).Based on the results from a number of different climate models, most climate scientists think that there will be more rainfall and more variability in where and when it falls. In other words, it might rain cats and dogs for a few days (floods), and then no rain at all for the next few months (droughts). The frequency of such events is expected to increase in the future, so that we may end up with an increased number of floods and droughts.
MORE

Floods and Global Warming Ceylon Daily News Jan 31

Floods]
*Sri Lanka
Affected areas - Central, Northern,
Eastern provinces
Homeless people - Over 541,000
persons were displaced
No of deaths - 23

* Brazil
Affected areas - Rio de Janeiro,
San Paulo States
No of homeless - 4,600
No of deaths - 471

*Philippines

Affected areas - one third of provinces
No of homeless - 400,000
No of deaths - 42

*Australia

Affected areas - Three-fourth of Queensland State
No of affected - 200,000
No of deaths - 35


Flooding in Sri Lanka has resulted in deaths of about 23 persons during a week of monsoon floods in the Central, Northern and Eastern provinces especially Batticaloa and Trincomalee once severely bitten by terrorism. Over 541,000 persons were displaced and had to take shelter in 275 camps set up by the Government, bringing the total number of displaced persons to about 1,081,000.

Sri Lanka depends on monsoon rains for purposes of irrigation and generation of power but the seasonal, relentless downpour caused deaths and damage to homes, crops and infrastructure in low-lying areas and mountainous regions.MORE

And this warning from weather experts can scarcely be reassuring Extreme Weather Changes Could Follow Floods

COLOMBO, Jan 18, 2011 (IPS) - Weather experts warned Sri Lankan to be prepared for extreme weather changes with hardly any notice following devastating floods here that have affected over one million people.

"Global weather patterns are changing, we should be prepared for extreme changes," Gunavi Samarasinghe, the head of Meteorological Department, said as the country battled floods in the east as temperatures island-wide dropped to sixty year lows.

The drop in temperature was caused by the cloud cover over the island, Samarasinghe said. Colombo registered a temperature of 18.8C, while the central Nuwera Eliya highlands fell to a single digit - 7C.

Samarasinghe said that the island was facing the La Nina phenomenon during which temperatures near the Equator have dropped by as much as 5C. "We better be ready to face any kind of weather," he said.