How to tackle the anger of Mother Nature?

The city of Colombo was originally a natural marsh, and remains so. Under the present unusual weather conditions, with 350 millimetres of rain per day, thousands of families have been displaced and property has been damaged.

Soldiers and police on Thursday struggled to find dozens of people missing after landslides that destroyed at least three central Sri Lankan villages in the District of Kegalla, with fresh rains triggering smaller slides and forcing rescuers to briefly suspend their efforts.



Sri Lanka: Number of people affected by floods and landslides (as of 22 May 2016).
Source: http://reliefweb.int

The heaviest rains in a quarter of a century have deluged several parts of Sri Lanka since last weekend. The Cyclone Roanu has triggered huge landslides that have buried victims in up to 15 metres (50 feet) of mud and left 127 people missing.

The subsequent flash floods which left thousands homeless, has posed a fresh challenge to Sri Lanka in terms of its readiness to tackle the unexpected anger of Mother Nature.

Nearly 300,000 people were staying in about 500 state-run relief centres Saturday, which also marks the Buddhist celebration of Vesak.

Many man-made reasons are attributed to the flooding and landslides, not least haphazard ‘development’, bad urban planning, corruption within local councils and the pressure of population on available land. Needless to say, the future of climate change is something we worry about. We are an island people and we are surrounded by water, water everywhere. We have so many rivers flowing from our hills and draining into the Indian Ocean. Our Kings of Old knew this very well and built irrigation tanks all around our nation. We now need to concentrate on preservation of our habitat, our waterways, our hillsides, gardens and forests, and climate change.

As the Buddhist world celebrates the month of Vesak, we pay tribute to the teaching of Buddha and pray: "May all beings be free from suffering; free from sickness; be well and happy."