Families count the cost of devastating Sri Lanka floods | World News

On the outskirts of Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, Asiri is trying to dry out his home.

He’s just spent five days upstairs trying to escape the rising flood waters.

By finding some elevation, he’s been able to protect his family. But, downstairs, he’s confronted with the scale of the damage in the place he calls home.

“The water was right up to here,” he tells us, as he points to a water mark about two and a half feet up the wall.

There was “no power, no water – it all broke”, he says.

Cyclone Ditwah has already claimed the lives of more than 400 people in Sri Lanka and hundreds are still missing.

This island nation has dealt with a multitude of tragedies – a tsunami which killed around 35,000 people and more recently an economic collapse.

This latest challenge is one of the worst natural disasters in its history.

Sunil, Asiri’s uncle, tells me he had to improvise to help his brother survive. He shows us a video of his sibling on a makeshift wooden raft he made attached to an inflatable ring.

It allowed them to take him to hospital and it’s the kind of desperate dynamic playing out across the country. Unlike the tsunami, this didn’t just hit coastal areas. It hugely hammered the city and mountainous regions too.

Some have been critical of the government response, claiming it was slow to call an emergency and slow to deliver aid and rescue stranded people.

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India and Pakistan have now sent helicopters and cargo planes to help – but the hard work will start with repair and there’s a lot to be done here, physically and emotionally.

Bodies are still being pulled from landslides in the popular tourist destination of Kandi.

Sri Lanka joins the list of Asian nations wrestling with the sharp end of an intense cordon of typhoons, cyclones and storms this monsoon season.

Each year I’ve been living in this region, it appears to intensify, presenting a challenge few governments seem to be able to meet.