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Article: Preventing natural disasters
- Article from:
- The Sunday Observer
- Article date:
- January 11, 2009
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Report from the Sri Lanka Sunday Observer brought to you by HT Syndication.
Colombo, Jan. 11 -- Four decades ago, we considered ourselves to be fortunate enough to be less prone to natural hazards when compared with other countries in Asia. Since mid 80-s things have gradually begun to change and today we appear to be highly vulnerable to natural disasters. Look at the statistics of what happened last year!
Nearly a million people were badly affected by flooding (including 43 deaths) during the first three quarters. Over 5000 suffered due to storms and 800 by the landslides. 150,000 people were drought victims. In the 2008/9 budget Rs. 145 million has been allocated for disaster mitigation.