Ditwah exposes South Asia’s fragile edges

South Asia and Southeast Asia face a new class of disasters — storms that may not be the strongest by wind speed but are supercharged for rain. The infrastructure of the last century cannot meet the extremes of this one

- Roxy Mathew Koll

yclone warnings reached communities long before Senyar and Ditwah made landfall. Satellites tracked the storms, meteorological agencies issued heavy-rain alerts, and governments moved rescue teams into place. Yet, more than 1,000 people still died across Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, and India. ‘Most were swept away not by wind but by sudden torrents of water, landslides and flash floods.

Neither Senyar nor Ditwah ranked among the strongest storms of recent decades. Their wind speeds (60-80 km/hr) did not approach the ferocity of super cyclones (often reaching 200-250 km/hr), but they carried extraordinary amounts of water. In Sumatra, Senyar’s rains triggered landslides that buried homes and cut off entire districts. Ditwah drenched Sri Lanka, submerging towns, breaching the Mavil Aru dam, and forcing hundreds of thousands into shelters. Both storms acted as triggers — their

rainfall cascaded into landslides upstream and flash floods downstream, creating fast-moving, compound hazards that left communities little time to react.

The common thread is that the rainfall disasters occurred in places with hills and rivers, where steep terrain, encroached channels, dense settlement and fragile infrastructure amplify the danger. The cyclone warnings were technically accurate. What failed was the ability to translate a meteorological alert into safety on the ground. In several regions, communities had no time to act even when alerts were received. Rainfall intensified so quickly that slopes failed within minutes, highlighting how traditional warning lead-times are shrinking in a warming climate.