Sri Lanka Garbage Dump Collapse Kills at Least 19<br />By HIMAL KOTELAWALA and ELLEN BARRYAPRIL 15, 2017<br />Rescue workers in Sri Lanka’s capital city on Saturday dug through the debris of a garbage dump<br />that collapsed on top of a residential neighborhood a day earlier, burying scores of homes and killing at least 19 people.<br />Nalini Liyanage said eight people were in her house when they heard the initial explosion,<br />and they immediately left the house and ran as neighboring houses barreled toward them on a wave of waste.<br />The police said Saturday that they thought an explosion underneath the dump had set off the landslide,<br />sweeping as many as 100 houses off their foundations and sending them crashing into neighboring homes.<br />Residents have long objected to the hulking garbage dump and the trash-soaked water<br />that pours into narrow lanes of surrounding neighborhoods when it rains, leaving pools of standing water where mosquitoes breed.<br />Still, year after year, the mountain of garbage continued to grow, with tractors scaling its sides to dump fresh loads.<br />"People were shouting, screaming, ‘Run, run!’ I stepped out to take a look,<br />and I saw one of the nearby houses coming our way amidst a cloud of smoke." From a neighbor’s house, she watched the trash approach, carrying a red-painted house toward her, and then stop.<br />She said local residents had organized protests after torrential flooding last year, which caused water to accumulate in the garbage dump.
