Cyclone Ditwah Relief Program - Dec 2025

Cyclone Ditwah swept across Sri Lanka with destructive force, affecting more than 300,000 people across coastal and inland districts. The storm’s powerful winds and heavy rain destroyed or damaged over 45,000 homes, while storm surges wiped out fishing boats, small shops, and entire stretches of shoreline. Inland flooding submerged villages, washed out major roads, and ruined thousands of acres of farmland, leaving families without food or clean water for days. Landslides in the hill country forced emergency evacuations and buried several homes, adding to the chaos. Early estimates put the total economic loss at over 40 billion LKR (roughly $120 million USD), including damage to infrastructure, agriculture, housing, and public services. The scale of devastation showed how quickly a single storm can disrupt daily life and strain the country’s emergency-response systems. 

The evacuation during Cyclone Ditwah failed mainly because warnings didn’t reach people in time and the infrastructure wasn’t strong enough to handle a fast, organized response. Many coastal and rural communities rely on outdated communication systems, so families didn’t realize how serious the storm was until the water was already rising. Roads that were supposed to serve as evacuation routes were quickly blocked by fallen trees, flooding, and landslides, leaving emergency teams unable to reach the hardest-hit areas. Some families hesitated to leave out of fear of losing their belongings, while others had no transportation at all. Relief shelters filled up early, creating confusion about where people should go. Altogether, slow communication, limited resources, unsafe roads, and public hesitation made the evacuation far less effective than it needed to be. 

In progress