A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Tuesday, June 27, 2017
After the Floods:Let us not be like the monkey next time
Now that the flood waters appear to be receding, it is time take stock
of how the flooding and landslides unfolded and develop measures that
would mitigate these impacts in the future. Unfortunately, we do not
seem to learn from prior catastrophic floodsand plan better for future
events. Past responses to floods may be compared to the fictitious act
of "monkeys building houses." The story goes like this:when the heavy
rain comes, the monkeys call a meeting to discuss plans to build houses
for themselves and when the rains are over, they abandon the planning
and resume their normal behavior of roaming around by jumping from one
tree to another. Unfortunately, this analogy lays out exactly what
happens after a disaster but the citizens wish that it would be
different next time. The recent floods and landslides have caused an
unbearable toll on human lives and extensive damage to property and
disruption to a large region of Sri Lanka. Floods and landslides have
happened many times,not only in the southwest like the May 2017 event
but also in other areas. Unfortunately, the follow-up actions to the
past extreme events, if any, have not produced significant changes on
the ground. There is an opportunity, once again, to learn from this
disaster and take steps to develop and implement plans that will
alleviate impacts in extreme storms in the future. The writer of this
article has a few thoughts that will be discussed below.