Disasters in Sri Lanka: not popular yet impact is enormous

Abstract

Sri Lanka is prone to both natural and manmade disasters as other countries. Floods, cyclones, landsides and droughts have been considered as the major natural disasters in the country. Sri Lanka Disaster Management Act, No 13 of 2005 has identified twenty one (21) types of natural and manmade disasters. Except disasters consider as major, others are not popular among policy makers, planners, general public and other groups of relevant parties. But, the impacts of unpopular disasters in the list listed in the Sri Lanka Disaster Management Act are enormous in terms of several facets. And also, there are many other incidents that influence Sri Lanka are not still included into the national list of disasters and disaster management strategies. The broad objective of this paper is to discuss the reason or reasons for the dilemma on different levels of popularity among disasters in Sri Lanka. Literature survey and case studies employed to gather data. Both basic quantitative and qualitative methods used to analyze data. Problems relating to disaster management policy in Sri Lanka can be considered as key reason of grouping disasters into major or minor category. Other than this definition of the term ?disaster?, level of awareness on the impacts of disasters, intensity of the problems of basic needs, visions of politicians, nature of relationships among institutions and scientists and interest of mass media are the other reasons to be a disaster as popular or unpopular. Identifying the real impact of disasters that exist in the country would help to categories disasters ensuring the future goals of sustainable development in Sri Lanka.