20 Lankan fishermen dead, 40 missing

A delay by Sri Lanka’s Department of Meteorology in providing periodic weather updates in the wee hours of Saturday, resulted in at least 35 fishing boats going missing off the country’s southern coast where 20 fishermen were found dead on Sunday, reports ‘Ceylon Today’.

Forty fishermen are missing, according to the Disaster Management Centre (DMC).

Though adverse weather conditions started to be seen at 2am on Saturday, the Met Department’s warnings came only at 5am, Deputy Minister of Fisheries Sarath Kumara Gunaratne told Ceylon Today.

Fishermen and their families vociferously protested on the Colombo-Galle rail track, even preventing four trains moving on the southern coastal belt between 9 am and 10 am.

However, the trains were allowed to move after police intervention, a spokesman for the Train Control Room said.

Gunaratne said if the Met Department had disseminated the alert well in time, all 22 operational centres of the ministry would have been alerted, including the 10 main ones in Colombo, Galle, Beruwala and Kalutara, which could have prevented the tragedy.

Meanwhile, the Sri Lanka Air Force has deployed four helicopters to search for the missing fishermen at sea. They are two Y12 fixed wing aircraft and two Bell 412 helicopters.

The first Bell 412 helicopter rescued two fishermen between Colombo and Dehiwela and the second Bell 412 helicopter rescued another from Beruwala, Air Force media spokesman Air Commodore Andrew Wijesuriya told Ceylon Today.

He also said the fisherman who was rescued at Beruwala was dropped at the Katukurunda Airbase so that he could be sent to hospital.

The SLAF choppers on Saturday evening airlifted a man who was clinging on to a buoy near a coral reef, to Katukurunda and transported him to the Nagoda Hospital. The SLAF had also transported four fishermen, who were struggling in the sea, to e Navy vessels, he said.

When contacted by Ceylon Today for comments, Director General of Meteorology, S.H. Kariyawasam, admitted there was a lapse in reporting the adverse weather conditions, which prevailed in the early hours of Saturday but said his department had issued repeated warnings from as early as 4 pm on Friday about the ‘adversities’ in the coastal areas.
 

Follow Emirates 24|7 on Google News.