Hundreds of stunned villagers took shelter in nine temporary camps set up in schools and a Buddhist temple, where they were being given food, blankets and basic medical treatment.
At the Viyaneliya Temple, about 300 villagers shared a meal of brown bread and curried lentils. Local officials interviewed each one to learn about missing family members and possessions buried under the mud.
All nine of A.G. Alice’s children were unaccounted for after the landslide hit their home in Siripura village.
“I don’t know what happened to me” after the landslides swept down, the 70-year-old said.
A man said his wife, mother-in-law, son and daughter-in-law were all in his house in Siripura when the landslides hit. “I still can’t locate my family,” M.W. Dharmadasa said. “I still don’t know what happened to them.”
Military spokesman Brigadier Jayanath Jayaweera told reporters in the capital, Colombo, that the army had so far rescued 156 people trapped by landslides, and that more than 1,550 people are in shelters. He said the army was assessing the situation and would deploy more troops if needed.
The same rains that unleashed the mudslides also caused severe flooding in cities including Colombo, the capital, where tens of thousands of homes were at least partially inundated.
Sri Lanka’s disaster management center reported 41 deaths across the country since Monday from lightning strikes, floods, falling trees and other, smaller landslides. Nearly 135,000 people have been displaced and are in temporary shelters.
Mudslides are common during the monsoon season. Much of Sri Lanka has been deforested to clear land for agriculture, leaving the countryside exposed.
During heavy rains in December 2014, authorities evacuated more than 60,000 people from thousands of homes damaged or destroyed by floods or landslides. Two months before that, dozens of tea plantation workers were killed when mudslides buried their hillside homes.