The High Cost Of Negligence

By Mandana Ismail Abeywickrema in Karadiyanaru – Photos by Thusitha Kumara

Days after the explosion in the Karadiyanaru Police Station, debris can still be seen strewn several meters away from the site of the explosion. Debris from the containers could be seen on the bare lands on either sides of the Batticaloa-Badulla A5 highway. Senior police officers in Batticaloa told The Sunday Leader that the explosion was due to negligence on the part of the authorities for granting approval to a company to hold explosives when they had not followed the required safety precautions.
“Following the liberation of the East, the government ordered the setting up of police posts in the region. Most of these police stations have been set up in temporary locations and lack even basic requirements for a police station like a holding cell and an armoury,” the police officers said. These issues, they said would result in another massive incident like the Karadiyanaru explosion if not addressed soon.

When The Sunday Leader visited the site of the explosion, minor explosion sounds were from heated and damaged ammunition from the former police station strewn around the premises. A massive crater of about five feet in depth is a clear indication of the severity of the explosion.
A police officer said that the Government Analyst who had visited the site of the explosion had said at least 500kgs of explosives would be needed to create a crater of such magnitude.
A police constable standing outside the site from the Ayithyamale police said that when they arrived a few minutes after the explosion, there were remains of several persons strewn all over.
A. Wickremasinghe, the uncle of Chandana Kumara Hettiarachchi who died in the explosion, was looking at the debris of the double cab driven by his nephew.
“My nephew purchased a double cab and rented it to the Chinese Company. He could speak a little Chinese so the company asked him to drive his cab for them. Now he is dead and I was asked by his family to see if we could find any documents that belonged to the vehicle,” he said.
A new Karadiyanaru police station has been established a few feet away from the explosion site.
Police officers from the Ayithyamale police and those remaining from the Karadiyanaru police are still completing construction work of the new police station.
The remains of two persons – a driver attached to the Chinese company (Covec China) and a police officer – are still missing.
The Covec-China site near the Karadiyanaru police, where the explosives were to be taken to a quarry, has come to a complete standstill without explosives to blast the granite.
Nevertheless there still remained mountains of granite stones blasted earlier and powdered granite.
When The Sunday Leader visited the Covec-China project office in Urani, Batticaloa, the Project Manager who is a Chinese national refused to speak saying he was busy.
However, the office seemed to be at a standstill as well. A small memorial site was set up in the office premises with offerings placed before two portraits of the diseased Chinese nationals – Luo Jian Xin (metal quarry manager) and Xu Xiao Jiang (deputy project manager).

Lucky Escape
It was mere luck that helped Manawaduge Tilga survive the explosion at the Karadiyanaru Police Station. A resident of Batticaloa, Tilga had joined the police force in 2008 and was assigned to the Karadiyanaru police about a year and a half ago.
Tilga was one of the lucky survivors of the explosion. However, she suffered severe injuries to her hip and is currently being treated at the Batticaloa Base Hospital.
“It was luck that saved me,” she said recalling the events that took place minutes prior to the explosion.
“I was in the human resources division, which was located adjoining the containers. However, I was called to the complaints division to write down a complaint as there was no one there at the time,” she said.
However, soon after she had started to write down a complaint, one her colleagues had walked up to the door and said there was a bright light outside the police. “There was a bright light and with it came a loud noise. The wall next to me collapsed and I was buried under it. That is all I remember,” she said.
Tilga had woken up several hours later in the hospital. She has to undergo surgery to her hip and is to take bed rest for about two months before reporting for duty again.