Qualla: 2017 Meethotamulla Landslide

2017 Meethotamulla Landslide: Introduction

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

They called it the Garbage Mountain. For years, the 21-acre dump at Meethotamulla in the Colombo District had been growing taller, fed by roughly 750 tonnes of waste every day, rising to a height of nearly 49 meters above the surrounding neighborhoods. Families lived in the shadow of that mountain -- impoverished communities with few options about where to settle, enduring the stench and the flies because the land was what they could afford. On the morning of April 14, 2017, as Sri Lanka celebrated Sinhalese New Year, that mountain moved.

2017 Meethotamulla Landslide: The Morning Everything Fell

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Sinhalese New Year is a time of family gatherings, sweet rice, and oil lamps lit at auspicious hours. In the homes clustered around the Meethotamulla dump, families were beginning their celebrations when a massive section of the garbage mountain sheared away and collapsed onto th...

2017 Meethotamulla Landslide: Warnings That Went Unheard

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The collapse was not a surprise to everyone. A Presidential Commission of Inquiry, appointed by President Maithripala Sirisena on April 26, 2017, and headed by retired Court of Appeal Judge Dr. Chandradasa Nanayakkara, found that the Colombo Municipal Commissioner, V. K. A. Anura...

2017 Meethotamulla Landslide: The Audit of Accountability

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In May 2018, the Auditor General released a damning report that placed responsibility squarely on the Colombo Municipal Council. The CMC was found responsible not only for the 32 deaths and the property damage, but also for failing to properly dispose of waste over many years and...

2017 Meethotamulla Landslide: A Pattern Written in Refuse

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Meethotamulla was not unique. In 2017 alone, a similar garbage landslide at the Koshe dump in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, killed over 100 people. Two years earlier, a construction-waste landslide in Shenzhen, China, buried an industrial park. In each case, the pattern repeated: growin...