Death rains on Wayanad

Trigger warning: The following article has disturbing details.

In the early, dark hours of July 30, nature staged a macabre dance on two sleepy villages in the lap of the Vellarimala range in the Western Ghats. In a few minutes, roughly 200 households in the biggest ever landslide in Kerala’s history, were wiped out.

When the sun rose in the morning, Mundakkai and Chooralmala, twin settlements in Wayanad’s Vellarimala village in Mepadi panchayat had vanished, transforming a landscape of rolling hills into a horrifying trail of havoc. A couple of landslides that Vellarimala unleashed at 1 a.m. and 4:10 a.m. have killed 308 people so far and injured about 200. The number of people missing is still nearly 300.

The Indian Space Research Organisation’s National Remote Sensing Centre would later release satellite images showing that 86,000 square metres of land had simply slipped out of place. The swift flowing debris, from crown to run-out zone, lasted 8 km. The landslide plunged into the Iruvazhinjipuzha, one of the tributaries of the Chaliyar river, swollen with the rain, changing its course. The combination of cascading heavy mud and gushing water took its toll.

The last time Kerala witnessed this sort of devastation was during the floods of 2018 that claimed 480 lives and affected over 5 million people.

Rescue and relief was quick, with over 1,800 personnel of the Indian Army, Navy, Airforce; Indian Coast Guard Disaster Relief Team; and the National and State level Disaster Response Forces coming in. State forces from the forest, excise, and motor vehicle departments are providing logistical support.

Now, families count missing loved ones. Every family has losses, some more than others. “I lost my sister Afeeda, her husband Sattar, and their children Filu, Adi, and Sanu at Mundakkai. Twenty-five members of Sattar’s family have disappeared,” says Sakeer K., a construction worker who had asked his sister to come to his house at Nellimunda, a couple of kilometres away, far from the river. “I feared for them as it was raining unusually heavy that night.”

Jitika Prem, a dance teacher from Mundakkai, shudders at the thought of her missing students. She attempts to describe how she and her family ran out of their house to safety when giant rocks and logs flattened her house. She lost her cousins Sivan, Jijina, and Pramodini, who were found in a huddle in death. Many gathered in a resort near Mundakkai to shelter.

Forewarned but unarmed

The first landslide took place at around 1 a.m. Mundakkai and Chooralmala. The thunderous sound of the floodwaters woke them up, but many could not move out of their houses in time. Local WhatsApp groups were soon flooded with screams for help. The cry of a woman named Minnath went viral as it was forwarded from group to group. “Many people are stuck in their homes. Please come, help us. The house behind Basheerka’s shop is gone. I don’t know what happened to my husband.” Her cries were heard, and she saved by local people. AGE

Moidu Onapparambil hung on to a ceiling fan after standing on a cot along with his daughter and her eight-month-old child. The swirling water and mud reached his neck when he says he made the most decisive move of his life to get through a half open door. “I stared death in the face. The bypass surgery I recently underwent has weakened me. I mustered all my energy; my daughter hung on to my back, and I held my grandchild over my head, and we pushed ourselves through the mud for about 250 metres,” recounted Onapparambil, at a relief camp at Government Higher Secondary School, Meppadi town, about 15 km from the disaster zone. His feet were bandaged for injuries he suffered during the escape. Two camps in Meppadi of the 82 camps across Wayanad are catering to survivors. They are established in a government and a private school.

Editorial | Unnatural disaster: On the Wayanad landslides

Onapparambil’s was a two-storey concrete house, about 50 metres from the Iruvazhinji rivulet, that flowed through Chooralmala. Nothing of it remains now. “I lost my wife’s mother, her sister, her husband, and their children in Mundakkai. Several of my family and friends have disappeared,” he syas. “If the first landslide was a test dose, then the second was nature’s prescription,” he says.

Deadly deluge

When he heard the news of the first landslide, Wayanad District Panchayat president Shamshad Marakkar reached Chooralmala at 2 a.m. along with his friends. “The second landslide came after 4 a.m. unleashing the sound of a dinosaur in a DTS theatre. It was so huge that it wiped out everything in its path. I took the first body of a man that morning, followed by that of a girl, to hospital,” he says.

The landslide took away people in their sleep and brought their mangled bodies to the Chaliyar downstream at Munderi. Many bodies went through the steep waterfalls of Soochippara, Kanthanpara, and Meenmutty before reaching Munderi in Pothukal near Nilambur.

It knocked down a bridge connecting Chooralmala with Mundakkai and Attamala, the Shiva temple of Chooramala, a mosque at Mundakkai, a Government Vocational Higher Secondary School in Vellarmala, and houses and business establishments. A few resorts too were destroyed.

“I had several of my friends in Mundakkai and Attamala. They are missing,” said Dheera Singh, a tea estate labourer from Madhya Pradesh, as he stands dazed at the site where the Shiva temple had stood. A ficus tree next to the temple site still stands, a witness to what is lost. So does a portion of the large temple auditorium. Temple priest Kumar Swamy’s body was recovered and taken to his home State Tamil Nadu. Mundakkai Masjid Imam Shihab Faizy Qayyoomi’s body was retrieved from the Chaliyar at Pothukal. The landslide took away a portion of the masjid in which Faizy was sleeping.

Shailaja K.M., who used to help Kumar Swamy clean the bronze lamps at the Chooralmala temple, says Shiva helped them get out of the chest-deep water. “My children and I gathered in one room as floodwaters began rising. We thought we would dead. I sent messages on WhatsApp to my brothers, bidding them farewell,” she remembers, at one of the camps. They managed to push through the mud to safety. “We climbed to the second floor of our neighbour Azeez’s house,” says Shailaja.

It was pitch dark as the power lines had snapped. Some with clothes on and some without, ran into the coffee and cardamom plantations nearby to escape. There, they confronted elephants, but remained safe. “We realised that the wild elephant understood our plight. The tusker did nothing to us,” whimpers Sujata, who was trapped in front of an elephant in the dark chilly night.

Trauma and support

Until the Army constructed a Bailey bridge across the Iruvazhinjipuzha, a tributary of the Chaliyar, using prefabricated trusses on August 1 evening, the search for bodies in Mundakkai was hard as rescue teams and machines could not make it across the river. “Our bridge is going to make a big difference in the search operation. We have to search the whole area using earth movers and other heavy equipment. It will speed up the rescue and search operation,” says Maj. Gen. V.T. Mathew, general officer commanding in Kerala and Karnataka sub-area, who is in charge of the rescue operations at Mundakkai.

Search teams too had harrowing experiences. “When our men entered a mud-covered abandoned house, they were anguished to see the bodies of three children huddling on a sofa under the concrete rubble. Similarly, the body of a man was found lying peacefully on a cot,” said a Fire and Rescue Services senior official.

When it rained during the search, people on the site raised worries about a fresh landslip. Toys, books, spectacles, children’s clothes, utensils, medicines, framed marriage photos were found in damaged homes. Gas cylinders were seen under the rubble of some houses. “We expect bodies to be trapped under the debris, whether it is concrete or logs,” says Sajeer Madassery, a volunteer.

Most bodies retrieved by the search teams were disfigured and mutilated. Identifying them remains a hard task at the Community Health Centre, Meppadi. Forensic surgeons have been brought in from different government medical colleges for postmortems. “We are making sure that postmortem procedures are done as fast as we can to help relatives identify and claim the bodies,” says Dr. Reena K.J., Director of Health Services, Kerala.

The identification of mangled bodies is another traumatising experience for the survivors. “There is nothing more painful,” says Basheer Saadi, Wayanad district president of the Santhwanam help group that is volunteering here.

Mass graves have been dug at the graveyards of Mepadi Juma Masjid, Nellimunda Juma Masjid, and St. Sebastian Church at Chooralmala. Mass pyres have been prepared at Mepadi public crematorium. Many funerals were over with none shedding tears, because traumatised survivors and their relatives have been numbed by the tragedy. “The trauma is so deep; it will take a long time for them to recover. We are prioritising counselling for them,” says Dr. Reena.

The State and Central governments responded to the disaster with caution and alacrity, sending Army, Navy, and Air Force personnel for rescue and search. The State has mobilised its machinery by posting four ministers at Mepadi to supervise the rescue and rehabilitation. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said, “Counselling and privacy are very important for the survivors now.” The Education Department will soon send teachers to the relief camps to teach the children lodged there.

Forest Minister K. Sasindran said that the government would work on rehabilitation after completing the search operations. “It’s going to be a top priority for us. We will use all our experience for it,” he said.

Times of trouble

While the Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced ₹2 lakh for the next of kin of the deceased and ₹50,000 for the injured, the tragedy opened up a debate between the Centre and the State. Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that the Centre had warned Kerala of heavy rains and landslides on July 23, 24 and 25. Kerala Chief Minister, even when calling for joint measures to parry natural disasters caused by climate change and extreme weather conditions, refuted Shah’s claims, saying that neither the India Meteorological Department (IMD), nor the Geological Survey of India (GSI), nor the Central Water Commission had issued a red alert for Wayanad ahead of the July 30 landslides. IMD issued a red alert for Kerala in the early morning of July 30, a few hours after the State witnessed its worst landslide.

The GSI categorised the Vellarmala region of Wayanad as a highly vulnerable zone after the 2019 Puthumala landslide that took place just a few kilometres away from Mundakkai. In an atlas of landslide-prone areas made by ISRO, Wayanad is the most vulnerable in Kerala and is in the 13th position among the country’s 147 landslide-susceptible districts.

In 2011 the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel, headed by ecologist Madhav Gadgil, had categorised the area into three ecologically sensitive zones, with the now impacted Vythiri taluk one of the most sensitive. In an interview with The Hindu after the disaster, he had said, “No development should have taken place in these highly sensitive areas.” There are resorts, artificial lakes, and other commercial construction in the area.

In July 1984, Mundakkai had witnessed a massive landslide, killing 14 and burying 80 houses. Wayanad saw another in June 1992, in which 11 of a family were killed, and another in August 2018 that killed nine people and wreaked extensive damage to Kurichiarmala. The Puthumala tragedy of August 2019 left 17 dead and flattened 58 houses. But only 12 bodies were recovered after several days of search.

Experts say the continuous rain the region witnessed over the last two weeks had softened the soil, triggering the landslides. But they differ on how it happened. According to former GSI deputy director general C. Muraleedharan, heavy rain caused the supersaturated soil to blast like a dam, leading to a debris flow.

According to C.P. Rajendran, professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru, deforestation and unplanned buildings too were responsible. A study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health in 2022 found that 85% of Wayanad was under forest cover until the 1950s and 62% disappeared between 1950 and 2018.

“The frequency of landslides appears to have gone up in Wayanad,” says Rajendran, suggesting long-term strategies. Imaginative and humane initiatives are the need of the hour for Kerala, which has a high-density population, he says, adding that landslide risk mapping is a must by using all available resources, including satellite images.