Socioeconomic Impacts and Damages Encountered with Re-activated Landslide in Udawatta Area – A Case Study from Hanguranketha Area in Nuwara Eliya District

A disaster is a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources. Developing countries suffer the greatest costs when a disaster hits. More than 95 percent of all deaths caused by hazards occur in developing countries, and losses due to natural hazards are 20 times greater in developing countries than in industrialized countries. Disasters may disrupt the normal conditions of existence and causing a level of suffering that exceeds the capacity of adjustment of the affected community. Among all the disasters, landslide had become the most commondisaster in the country within short period of time in the recent past. The social impacts of landslides may consequences to human populations who were lived within the affected area that alter the day to day life-styles, livelihood patterns, cultural integrity and social network of affected families. The study revealed that one of the major landslide which were occurred in the Hanguranketha divisional secretariat inNuwaraEliya district having comprehensive impacts on human lives which may cannot easily be unravelled.