India landslide: Toll hits 166 as rains hamper rescue efforts

Rescue teams were forced to cart bodies on stretchers out of the disaster zone using a makeshift zipline erected over raging flood waters.

• Pramod Thomas
• 31 July, 2024

By: Pramod Thomas

SOLDIERS and rescuers worked through slush and rocks under steady rain, looking for survivors and searching for bodies in the hills of India’s Kerala state on Wednesday (31), a day after more than 165 people were killed in monsoon landslides.

Nearly 1,000 people had been rescued from the hillside villages and tea and cardamom estates in Wayanad district and 225 were still missing, authorities said on Wednesday. They said at least 166 people died and 195 were injured, while the local Asianet news TV channel put the death toll at 179.

Heavy rain in Kerala, one of India’s most attractive tourist destinations, led to the landslides early on Tuesday (30), sending torrents of mud, water and tumbling boulders downhill and burying or sweeping people away to their deaths as they slept.

It was the worst disaster in the state since deadly floods in 2018. Experts said the area had been receiving heavy rain in the last two weeks which had softened the soil and that extremely heavy rainfall on Monday (29) triggered the landslides.

The Indian Army said it rescued 1,000 people and has begun the process to construct an alternate bridge after the main bridge linking the worst affected area of Mundakkai to the nearest town of Chooralmala was destroyed.

Near the site where the bridge was washed away, a land excavator was slowing removing trees and boulders from a mound of debris. Rescue workers in raincoats were making their way carefully through slush and rocks, under steady rain.

“We are quite sure there are multiple bodies here,” said Hamsa T A, a fire and rescue worker, pointing to the debris. “There were many houses here, people living inside have been missing.”

The landslides were mostly on the upper slopes of hills which then cascaded to the valley below, said M R Ajith Kumar, a top state police officer.

“Focus right now is to search the entire uphill area for stranded people and recover as many bodies (as possible),” he said.

Nearly 350 of the 400 registered houses in the affected region have been damaged, Asianet reported, citing district officials.

After a day of extremely heavy rainfall that hampered rescue operations, the weather department expects some respite on Wednesday, although the area is likely to receive rain through the day.

The Indian Navy said its disaster relief team had reached the area on Tuesday night and search and rescue helicopters were deployed early on Wednesday but “adverse weather conditions due to incessant rains” posed challenges.

India has witnessed extreme weather conditions in recent years, from torrential rain and floods to droughts and cyclones, blamed by some experts on climate change.

The region hit by the landslide was forecast to get 204 millimetres (8 inches) of rainfall but ended up getting 572 millimetres (22.5 inches) over a period of 48 hours, Kerala’s chief minister said on Tuesday.

“The Arabian Sea is warming at a higher rate compared to other regions and sending more evaporation into the atmosphere, making the region a hotspot for deep convective clouds,” said S Abhilash, head of the Advanced Centre for Atmospheric Radar Research at Kerala’s Cochin University of Science and Technology.

“Deep developed clouds in the southeast Arabian Sea region were carried by winds towards land and produced this havoc.”

The number of fatal floods and landslides has increased in recent years, and experts say climate change is exacerbating the problem.

“Events like landslides, they are part of these climate-change-triggered heavy rainfall disasters,” said Kartiki Negi of the Indian environment think tank Climate Trends.

“India will continue to see more and more of these kinds of impacts in the future,” she added.

Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, who until recently represented Wayanad in parliament, said he had been unable to go through with a planned visit to the disaster.

“Due to incessant rains and adverse weather conditions we have been informed by authorities that we will not be able to land,” he said in a post on social media platform X.

“Our thoughts are with the people of Wayanad at this difficult time,” he added.

(Agencies)