A friend whom he directed to the disaster site to aid rescue efforts was also killed in the second cascade of mud and boulders.
"I have nightmares, thinking that I sent my friend to his death," a tearful Muthukrishnan said as he showed AFP reporters the wreckage of his modest home, destroyed on November 27.
"But it could have been more."
AFP was among the first news outlets to enter the stricken central province of Kandy, where the main road had been cut off for over a week due to falling boulders and landslides.
Reporters managed to get in when the road opened briefly on Thursday, before it shut again for urgent repairs.
In picturesque Hadabima village, surrounded by mountains on one side and a river on the other, 24 people were buried in last week's mudslides.
That is a fraction of the national toll of 481 deaths, more than half in the tea-growing central hills. Heavy rains triggered by Cyclone Ditwah had saturated the mountainsides and made them unstable.
- 'A cemetery now' -
Tailor Adish Kumaran, 41, said his sister and brother-in-law were buried when they rushed to rescue a neighbour whose home was damaged.
"They were also caught up in a second slide," Kumaran told AFP, adding that six bodies had not yet been recovered.
"This is a cemetery now. We don't want to live in this village anymore," he said.
Nationwide, some 345 people remain missing, according to official figures.
The government has said about 25,000 houses have been damaged or completely destroyed and has promised state help to rebuild.
But the main agency dealing with the recovery effort says Sri Lanka will need up to $7 billion for the task, much of it from international donors.
It is a vast sum for the island of 22 million people, still reeling from an economic meltdown in 2022.
Tea factory worker Mariah Sivakumar, 39, said her immediate priority was her three school-going children.
"All their books and clothes have been lost in the floods," she said from a relative's home after authorities warned her own house was at risk from a landslide.
She said there was no way she and her husband -- also a tea factory worker -- could afford to buy new uniforms and textbooks for the children, let alone build a new house.
- Unprecedented floods -
In the nearby town of Gampola, dozens of young volunteers worked to clear up after the river burst its banks.
Hundreds of families were sleeping at a local mosque, going out during the day to clean their homes, said cleric Faleeldeen Qadiri.
"We have seen floods before, but nothing this severe," he said.
The state is providing shelter for over 170,000 people, while additional private donations pour in.
A. M. Chandraratna, 70, owned a bed and breakfast overlooking the river in the town of Peradeniya.
But his restaurant had been completely washed away, and he was left trying to salvage what he could.
"I was born and brought up here," he told AFP. "I thought I knew how this river behaves."
Cyclone turns Sri Lanka's tea mountains into death valley
Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka (AFP) Dec 2, 2025 -
In the mist-draped mountains of Sri Lanka's tea country, rescuers were still plucking bodies from the reddish-brown mud on Tuesday after last week's cyclone, the island's worst natural disaster in decades.
At least 465 people were killed, according to disaster officials, with another 366 missing.
Sri Lanka's Air Force has been combing the landslide-struck landscape, surveying the damage and ferrying food and other essential supplies to marooned residents.
Though the rain has stopped, recovery has just begun.
As the first journalist for foreign media to join a relief mission over the tea-growing region, AFP photographer Ishara Kodikara saw a swathe of the country destroyed after slips of soil flattened everything in their paths, including roads and the vehicles that were on them.
The roof of some houses peaked through the mud, while the rest of the buildings were swallowed by the torrents of soil unleashed by Cyclone Ditwah.
Jagged tears in the mountainsides revealed churned-up expanses of earth, with a few patches of the lush vegetation still clinging nearby in stark contrast. There was no sign of human life in the wrecked landscape.
In the central Welimada area, now inaccessible to heavy vehicles, rescue workers pulled 11 bodies from the mud on Monday and appealed for help to search for dozens more.
In some places, entire slopes have been sheared away, leaving ochre wounds slicing through the dense plantation greenery.
- Swallowed by landslides -
The full extent of the damage to tea plantations, factories and tea pickers is not yet clear, but local media reported the industry has been hard hit.
What were once thick, unbroken canopies of tea are now wide channels of mud and debris.
The main roadway has been swallowed by landslides, buried under heaps of mud, rock and uprooted vegetation. Only a few stray pieces of tarmac remain, suggesting where the road once was.
The authorities say they have given top priority to reopening road access to the region, which is still supplied by air.
Helicopters from neighbouring India and Pakistan have also been deployed to evacuate tourists and the sick.
On the relief mission AFP attended on Tuesday, the VVIP Bell-412 aircraft had its seats removed to make room for food and other essential supplies.
It ferried water and dry rations to stranded residents of Nuwara Eliya, in the heart of the tea country and 100 kilometres (60 miles) east of Colombo.
Rescuers expect the death toll to rise as they regain access to areas that had been cut off from electricity and telephones for days.
The disaster is already the deadliest since the Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami of 2004, which devastated Sri Lanka's coastline.
This time, the entire country has been affected either by landslides or floods.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has declared a state of emergency, and appealed for international assistance.
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