Sri Lanka Garbage Dump Collapse Kills at Least 19
By HIMAL KOTELAWALA and ELLEN BARRYAPRIL 15, 2017
Rescue workers in Sri Lanka’s capital city on Saturday dug through the debris of a garbage dump
that collapsed on top of a residential neighborhood a day earlier, burying scores of homes and killing at least 19 people.
Nalini Liyanage said eight people were in her house when they heard the initial explosion,
and they immediately left the house and ran as neighboring houses barreled toward them on a wave of waste.
The police said Saturday that they thought an explosion underneath the dump had set off the landslide,
sweeping as many as 100 houses off their foundations and sending them crashing into neighboring homes.
Residents have long objected to the hulking garbage dump and the trash-soaked water
that pours into narrow lanes of surrounding neighborhoods when it rains, leaving pools of standing water where mosquitoes breed.
Still, year after year, the mountain of garbage continued to grow, with tractors scaling its sides to dump fresh loads.
"People were shouting, screaming, ‘Run, run!’ I stepped out to take a look,
and I saw one of the nearby houses coming our way amidst a cloud of smoke." From a neighbor’s house, she watched the trash approach, carrying a red-painted house toward her, and then stop.
She said local residents had organized protests after torrential flooding last year, which caused water to accumulate in the garbage dump.