Questionnaire survey – Rathnapura, Sri Lanka Part II

Hello everyone…, again it’s Gouri

During the survey we went to each and every household to gain information about their exposure and damage due to the floods. Our team includes eight people and they interviewed people as face to face interview by using the local Language called Sinhala.



Interviewing People

People were very supportive as they are always subjected to floods and subjected to severe damage and losses. Since many people based on their livelihood on natural resources they are highly affected by the floods. Not only their livelihood but also majority of the houses were flooded up to the top of ground floor or up to roof level during 2003 and 2017 floods.





Trying to show the inundation level during the 2017 flood

Inundation level of 2017 flood is nearly 10ft

  



 Many houses were damaged and the belongings too.



A damaged refrigerator which was under water

Floor damage due to flood

The door frame has washed away due to flood

Normally for single storey houses people build kind of a storage area (locally called it as "Soldora") at the ceiling level  to store valuable items when there is a sign of a flood. In general what people are doing during a flood is store the valuable items in to this storage area or the upper floor as much as possible and move to the safer and higher places until the flood level comes down.

Arrows show a typical storage area of a single storey house

During the visit we were able to see a pumping unit of a gem mine.

 

Pumping unit of a gem mine