Two British women stranded by landslides in Sri Lanka’s tea mountains are running out of food and water, the daughter of one of them has said, as officials reported that the death toll of Cyclone Ditwah has reached 465.
Melanie Watters, 54, and her friend Janine Reid, 55, both from London, were being driven through the mountains from Kandy in central Sri Lanka on Thursday when the road in front of them was swamped, sending a bus nearby over a cliff-edge.
The women’s own car was stuck in a ditch and at risk of being washed away, said Watters’ daughter, Katie Beeching, but the friends and their driver had to stay in the vehicle overnight in worsening conditions.
The two women had since found cover at a tea plantation, Beeching said, but she added that they were running out of food, water and fuel, with the roads in and out of the Pussellawa area remaining impassable.
Despite repeated frantic calls to the Foreign Office, Beeching, who is nine months pregnant, said she had been told that the UK government had no plan to facilitate an evacuation of the women, who were on a two-week holiday when the cyclone hit.
Beeching said she had called the Foreign Office and told them: ‘This is your job.’ She said the response was: “It isn’t our responsibility.”
She added: “There are literally two British nationals on their own, no food, water, fuel, no way in or out. This is getting worse. The weather’s going to change again in a couple of days. You know, there has to be a plan … I said: ‘This could be lives lost if you don’t take some sort of action, genuinely.’ But they just said: ‘No, there’s no plan.’”
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has been contacted for comment.
The Indian authorities evacuated the last of more than 330 of its stranded nationals from Sri Lanka on Monday.
Chetak helicopters from Indian aircraft carrier INS Vikrant airlifted several people to safer locations, while Indian Air Force helicopters were said to have aided the Sir Lankans in carrying out search operations in areas with no road access due to landslides and flooding.
On Sunday Sri Lanka’s president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, described the fallout from Cyclone Ditwah as the “largest and most challenging natural disaster in our history”.
Beeching said her mother and friend, who had left for a holiday on 21 November and were due to return this Wednesday, had been able to communicate intermittently since the cyclone hit.
She said: “They were travelling down from Kandy to the south-east. They were originally going to take the train, but they were advised not to take the train and to drive.
“They’re not on a tour or anything, it’s just them. As they were driving down, it hit – this is where the worst of the cyclone has hit, in the mountains, in the plantation region.
“On Thursday midday we basically got messages, which said: ‘This is really scary, there’s landslides everywhere, we’ve seen a bus go over the side of the cliff.’
“Where they were had the highest lives lost because obviously the landslides just cover people’s houses. Their driver turned around and they were heading back to Kandy but they got as far as a place called Pussellawa.”
Beeching, who works for an NGO and was previously at the National Crime Agency, said she had liaised closely with the Foreign Office in the past.
She said she had been dismayed by the lack of effort from British officials and that she had been unable to speak to the UK’s high commissioner to Sri Lanka, Andrew Patrick.
“[The Sri Lankan tourist police] said the military would have been there a few days ago and that they still haven’t,” she said. “They can hear helicopters flying over, but they’re apparently retrieving bodies.”
