“Ditwah Tornado: When Nature Strikes and Silence Speaks—The Human, Media, and Scientific Story Behind Sri Lanka’s Disaster”

 

Dr Manoj Jinadasa (PhD in Digital Critical Media Studies, Newcastle University, UK), Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Mass Communication, University of Kelaniya.

 

The Ditwah tornado was more than a natural disaster—it revealed deep failures in disaster communication, media ethics, and scientific knowledge sharing in Sri Lanka. Amid unprecedented destruction, mainstream and social media amplified emotional spectacle, rumours, and culturally embedded narratives, often overshadowing factual explanations. This article explores how media practices, state response, and scientific engagement—or the lack thereof—shaped public understanding of the disaster. Drawing lessons from the human stories, ecological vulnerabilities, and historical knowledge of Sri Lanka’s central highlands, it argues for ethical, evidence-based disaster communication, culturally sensitive engagement, and sustained scientific accountability. The piece highlights the urgent need to bridge gaps between expertise, governance, and the public to prevent and mitigate the social and material costs of future calamities.

 

Introduction

The Ditwah tornado disaster represents more than an extreme meteorological event; it exposes deep structural failures in disaster communication, media ethics, scientific knowledge circulation, and state responsibility in Sri Lanka. In the aftermath of the disaster, public understanding was shaped less by scientific explanation and institutional clarity than by emotionally charged media narratives, rumours, and culturally embedded interpretations.

 

Situating the Ditwah disaster within a Global South context—marked by ecological vulnerability, uneven development, and fragile trust in expert institutions—this analysis examines how media, the state, and scientific actors collectively construct disaster meanings. By foregrounding communication practices, knowledge gaps, and media economies, the disaster highlights the necessity of treating such events not merely as natural phenomena but as communicative, political, and cultural processes with enduring social consequences.

 

Theoretical Framing

Understanding the Ditwah disaster requires interdisciplinary insight from risk, media, and knowledge production studies in the Global South. Drawing on Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society (1992), disasters are conceptualised not simply as environmental phenomena but as socially mediated events whose meanings, risks, and responsibilities are produced through communication systems.

 

In postcolonial contexts like Sri Lanka, these processes unfold amid uneven development, fragile institutions, ecological precarity, and a history of mistrust in state authority, complicating the circulation of expert knowledge. Anthony Giddens (The Consequences of Modernity, 1990; Modernity and Self-Identity, 1991) illuminates how late-modern uncertainty increases reliance on scientific expertise while deepening public scepticism toward state governance, especially in societies shaped by colonial legacies.

 

From a media ecology perspective, inspired by Marshall McLuhan (Understanding Media, 1964) and Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death, 1985), contemporary Sri Lankan media environments—shaped by commercialisation, platformisation, and algorithmic visibility—prioritise emotional spectacle, speed, and virality over slow, explanatory, and preventive forms of disaster communication. The political economy of media, drawing on Dallas Smythe's Dependency Road (1981) and Vincent Mosco's The Political Economy of Communication (2009), reveals how disasters in Global South contexts are commodified as media events, where suffering populations become commodities that generate attention.

 

Finally, science and disaster communication scholarship (Brian Wynne, 1996; Sheila Jasanoff, 2004) alongside anthropological theories of risk and belief (Mary Douglas, Risk and Blame, 1992) explain why rumours, ritual explanations, and conspiracy narratives in Sri Lanka not merely cultural residues are but responses to epistemic exclusion, weak institutional communication, and long-standing gaps between scientific knowledge and everyday life. These perspectives enable a grounded analysis of the Ditwah tornado as a communicative, cultural, and political process shaped by Global South realities rather than as an isolated meteorological incident.

 

Discussion

 

The Ditwah tornado disaster continues to remind us of profound suffering, pain, and deeply moving human narratives. From the onset and in the aftermath, mainstream and social media became central platforms for public information and so-called public service communication. Yet, much coverage was shaped by the logic of media markets, audience ratings, and emotional spectacle.

 

Instead of calm, scientific, and ethically responsible communication, traditional and digital media largely focused on emotionally charged stories—images of grief, loss, and helplessness—to capture public attention. This approach has historical roots in journalism, from early yellow journalism in the United States to contemporary sensational practices in Sri Lankan newspapers, television channels, and online platforms. While such storytelling attracts audiences and advertising revenue, it risks intensifying public trauma and fear during crises.

 

Paradoxically, the media also assumed relief roles, distributing information on food, shelter, and aid resources. This dual function highlights the complex and often contradictory nature of disaster communication in modern media environments.

 

The Ditwah disaster also raises questions about how sudden natural hazards—tornadoes, cyclones, landslides, and earth fissures—are understood in public discourse. Environmental degradation, deforestation, unplanned construction, and disruption of natural water flows in hilly regions contribute to vulnerability. Yet, such structural and ecological factors are often overshadowed by sensational narratives that prioritise emotion over explanation.

 

Equally important are pre- and post-disaster narratives emerging from rural and affected communities. Cultural beliefs, rituals, and cosmologies involving spirits, demons, and ancestral forces shaped interpretations. In villages near Yahangala in the Knuckles mountain range, some residents linked the disaster to the disturbance of Ravana-associated stones by treasure hunters. In Kegalle, rumours involved underground explosions, smoke, and even foreign conspiracies aimed at displacing populations.

 

These narratives, whether spiritual, mythical, or conspiratorial, reveal gaps in scientific risk communication and trust between communities, the state, and expert institutions. The Ditwah tornado demonstrates that effective disaster communication must go beyond emotional spectacle and market-driven media logic. It requires ethically grounded journalism, culturally sensitive engagement, and clear, accessible science communication that respects local belief systems while countering misinformation.

 

Science, Governance, and Knowledge Gaps

The proliferation of non-scientific narratives often obscures underlying facts. At this critical juncture, the government, higher education institutions, and scientific research bodies must investigate and communicate remedies grounded in natural sciences: geology, geography, meteorology, disaster management, demography, and anthropology.

The central highlands of Sri Lanka—traditionally less disturbed by industrial construction—experienced severe geological stress due to exceptionally heavy rainfall exceeding 500 millimeters in a short period. This raises questions about structural vulnerability, slope instability, and subsurface geological conditions, as well as possible indirect effects from broader tectonic processes in South and Southeast Asia, including Java and Sumatra.

Why such scientific data is not adequately communicated remains a concern. From personal experience growing up in a household where my mother was a Geography teacher and later a school principal, and through early academic exposure at the University of Peradeniya, I learned that senior geologists had warned for decades about the Central Province’s vulnerability to landslides, slope failures, and long-term ecological stress.

These vulnerabilities were worsened by infrastructure projects like the Victoria and Kotmale reservoirs, which altered natural hydrology and ecological balance. Historical ecological wisdom is evident in Sri Lanka’s ancient hydraulic civilizations, which concentrated large tank systems in lowland regions while avoiding the central highlands—lessons often ignored by modern development planning.

 

The lack of serious engagement with scientific knowledge led to post-Ditwah misinformation: ritualistic explanations, cult beliefs, and conspiracy narratives spread across mainstream and social media platforms. Rather than challenging such narratives, media often treated the disaster as a spectacular event, using emotional storytelling to increase engagement and monetise public suffering. Communities were instrumentalised as sources of clicks, ratings, and revenue—reflecting a media ecology where commercial logics override ethical responsibility, amplifying fear, trauma, and confusion.

 

Toward Ethical Disaster Communication

State institutions, universities, and disaster authorities have a crucial role. They must establish accountable platforms for generating, validating, and disseminating scientific data. Knowledge must be translated into accessible communication strategies that inform present response and future preparedness.

 

Preventing and mitigating natural hazards requires more than emergency relief. It demands visible and sustained state commitment to scientific research, public education, and ethical disaster communication. Such efforts are not merely technical obligations but expressions of the state’s responsibility and legitimacy.

 

Conclusion

 

The Ditwah tornado disaster shows that the most enduring damage of natural hazards often lies not only in physical destruction but in communicative failure. When scientific knowledge is poorly translated, institutions remain silent or fragmented, and media prioritise spectacle, misinformation fills the void—amplifying fear, trauma, and cultural blame.

 

Ethical disaster communication is inseparable from governance, scientific accountability, and public trust. Sri Lanka must now invest in sustained science communication, coordinated disaster narratives, and media practices grounded in public responsibility. Reconnecting scientific expertise, historical ecological knowledge, and culturally sensitive communication is essential not only for managing future disasters but for reaffirming state legitimacy and the social role of knowledge in an era of escalating climate risk.

 

Image from; https://www.gwp.org/en/gwp-SAS/WE-ACT/change-and-impact/News-and-Activities/2025/cyclone-ditwa---sri-lanka/