UN plea over Sri Lankan floods

THE UNITED Nations is to appeal for emergency flood aid for Sri Lanka, where at least 38 people have died, hundreds of thousands are homeless and vast rice fields ready to be harvested are now under water.

• After the deluge: women wade through flooded streets in the eastern region of Batticaloa, where rice fields that were ready for harvesting have been ruined by torrential rain. Photograph: Lakruwan Wanniarachchi, AFP/Getty

The flooding has wrecked the livelihoods of around one million people in the eastern region of the country hardest hit by the heavy rains.

An appeal will be issued by the UN in the coming days for money to help replant the fields and compensate people affected.

"I urge donors to generously support priority needs such as mosquito nets, clean water and food," said UN resident and humanitarian co-ordinator Neil Buhne.

Extensive flooding caused widespread devastation in three continents last week with lives lost in Brazil, Australia and Asia.

In Sri Lanka more people were reported dead yesterday, raising the death toll to 38 with four others missing and 51 injured. The largest number of deaths - 18 - was recorded in Batticaloa district.

Nearly 390,000 remain homeless and 3,744 houses have been totally destroyed, according to Pradeep Kodippili of the Disaster Management Centre.

As floodwaters slowly receded in the worst-hit Eastern Province, some people in Karaithivu village in eastern Ampara district came out and cleaned their houses for rituals marking the ethnic Tamils' traditional harvest festival.

Sellaih Rasiah, a community leader in Karaithivu, said villagers affected by the 2004 tsunami have lost most of their belongings and would again have to start anew. Many school children have lost their books and clothes.

The mud-walled hut with a coconut palm roof where 25-year-old labourer Muttumari Jegathisvaran lived collapsed. All his belongings had been washed away and the banana trees and vegetables in his garden were dead or dying.

"There is no festival for us. I have no work, no place to live," he said.

The government has estimated that the flood has caused losses amounting to around 300 million.

Some villages are marooned, with little or no food aid coming in. In the eastern Batticaloa district, 300 families have been living on corn and yams, said Velayutham Thevanayagam, a village official.Concerns about the spread of disease, including typhoid, are also growing as the floods cause sewage drains to overflow and contaminate wells.

Health officials have also ordered pregnant women and young children to be hospitalised to shield them from waterborne diseases.

Health ministry spokesman Dharma Wanninayake said teams of doctors and health inspectors have been sent to the affected areas and have set up clinics, but residents said some hospitals are not prepared for an epidemic.

In Muttur hospital in eastern Trincomalee district only four doctors are available, while ten times that number are needed, said Mohammed Jihad, a community leader.

Meanwhile, heavy rain prompted new flood warnings in Australia even as thousands of volunteers cleaned up the sludge and mud coating homes and streets in its third largest city yesterday.

Four states had flood warnings due to overflowing rivers and rain, while Queensland worked to recover from the disaster. Large parts of the vast state are still under water and some places remain on flood alert.

In Brisbane the water that swamped entire neighbourhoods has mostly receded, leaving behind a thick, putrid sludge.

About 7,000 residents joined 600 military personnel in what was dubbed "Salvation Saturday" to shovel, mop and sweep away the mess after the Brisbane river overflowed last week.

Mayor Campbell Newman praised the mass turnout. "Everybody rolls up their sleeves in this town," Newman said.

The volunteers were given mops, rubbish bags and cleaning supplies before being bused to the areas of Brisbane most in need.

Sue Pearson, who lives in a mostly unaffected part of the city, turned up at a volunteer centre with her husband and two children.

"We couldn't believe what we were seeing on television and thought we wanted to give up Saturday to come help and do what we could," Pearson said. "So we grabbed a few brooms and spades and came down here today."

More than 30,000 homes and businesses in the state capital were flooded, and the mayor said a complete clean-up of the city would take months and reconstruction up to two years. More than 28,650 properties still lack power.

Some parts of the electricity network were flooded or washed away, but the receding waters will allow better access to the infrastructure so power can be restored to more properties today.

The floods have caused 26 deaths in north-east Australia since late November, and 28 others are missing, most of them from a flash flood that hit towns west of Brisbane on Monday.

Flooding rains spread farther south along Australia's east coast on Friday, forcing thousands of people to be evacuated from their homes in Victoria state and the island state of Tasmania.

Some towns were all but abandoned as major flood alerts were issued for five rivers in Victoria.Three towns in north-west Tasmania were also evacuated after an entire summer's average rainfall fell in a single day.

One economist has estimated the Queensland floods' cost could be as much as A$13 billion (8.1bn) or 1 per cent of the country's output in Australia's A$1.3 trillion economy.