With the onset of adverse weather, Sri Lanka annually suffers a period of flooding and landslides. Despite a number of casualties and deaths which occur each year due to landslides in Sri Lanka, little is done to mitigate the threat and build awareness about landslide risk.
While some effort has been made to improve early warning of increased landslide risk, and landslide prone areas being mapped for disaster preparedness, one of the fundamental contributors to increased landslide-related risks has generally been overlooked. The lack of awareness about how landslides happened and why buildings and structures being built in risk area’s need to be designed with such considerations, and reinforced to higher standards is one contributing factor.
The National Building Research Organisation (NBRO) yesterday told The Daily Morning that poor architectural planning, and shortcoming in structural engineering-based construction which are often used, are also to blame for damages, with certain cases in immovable property. With the risk of landslides completely and partially destroying immovable property islandwide, the NBRO expressed concern on lapses in floor and building planning and recommended consideration of the angle of the slope during planning as well as the construction of a strong foundation. “Several buildings are not designed with the slope in mind,” Senior Scientist attached to the NBRO’s Landslide Research and Risk Management Division, R. Mahesh B. Somarathna told The Daily Morning yesterday (3). “So therefore, we encourage building plans to be made with the angle of the slope in mind.”
When asked by The Daily Morning on whether a lack of quality raw materials was also partly to blame, the NBRO denied this. “We have not experienced many faults with the quality of the building materials used; so therefore, we want to emphasise that proper structural plans are put in place when constructing,” Somarathna said.
Reports indicate that at least 12 people are believed to have died from landslides caused by adverse weather.
One of the challenges Sri Lanka faces in ensuring infrastructure and structural safety is that it needs to update existing legislature and improve the building code, to include specific conditions for building in flood-prone and landslide-prone areas. A similar concern is the lack of fire safety in buildings in urban areas. Last year, following a major fire at a crowded multistoried market building in Pettah, the Colombo Fire Brigade and city officials expressed concern about how unplanned urbanisation and building was creating high risk areas which were turning into tinderboxes.
Commenting on the incident and the risk posed to the city of Colombo by such unplanned, high density built areas, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) MP for Colombo and former State Minister of Economic Reforms and Public Distribution Dr. Harsha de Silva said that there was an urgent need for an audit of building code and CIDA code compliance in Colombo and the suburbs. He stressed that the Urban Development Authority (UDA), CIDA, and the Fire Brigade, aided by other State and city agencies, should conduct an audit as a matter of urgency to identify risk factors and high risk areas. De Silva opined that many constructions and buildings and some high-rise buildings in and around Colombo did not comply with CIDA or building codes and as such were rife with hazards.
“We need an audit to be carried out by the UDA, CIDA, and emergency response services for compliance in the city of Colombo and the suburbs,” MP de Silva said. As such, it is prudent for the Government to review existing city regulations, and building codes like CIDA, and bring them in line with international best practices, which improve compliance, and create awareness about how buildings and structures can be built to face fires, floods and landslides.