After devastating floods and landslides, Sri Lanka plans new building code
By Amantha Perera
Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake blamed the worst of the flooding in the capital on illegal landfills and construction, which filled in marshlands and other drainage areas. Without those areas, the city was unable to absorb the heaviest rains in a quarter of a century, which struck last week and caused about $2 billion worth of damage. In addition to protecting drainage areas, the government will ban new construction in areas susceptible to landslides.
“There will be a new building code effective from June 1 (under which) environmental approval has to be obtained that the construction is not on a dangerous area,” Karunanayake told reporters in Colombo on Wednesday. While Colombo was hardest hit in financial terms, most of those who died were from three villages about 120 kilometres northeast of the capital, in the district of Kegalle. Officials say 66 of the 101 bodies recovered were pulled from a river of mud after a hillside collapsed there, engulfing the villages.