(CTN News) – On Tuesday, landslides raced across tea estates and communities in southern India’s Kerala, killing at least 106 people while they slept as unexpected heavy rain crumpled slopes and unleashed torrents of mud, water, and falling boulders.
The Wayanad area of Kerala, a major tourist destination in India, had torrential rainfall after midnight on Monday. The majority of the victims were tea estate workers and their families, who lived in modest homes or improvised shelters.
Television footage showed rescue personnel crawling through toppled trees and crushed tin houses, while rocks littered the hillsides and filthy water gushed through. Rescuers were being pushed across a stream while carrying stretchers and other emergency equipment.
The landslides killed at least 106 people, injured 128 others, and left scores missing, according to state authorities. Asianet TV reported that the death toll has risen to 119.
Tuesday’s landslides are the state’s greatest calamity since 2018, when torrential floods killed around 400 people.
“There are still people trapped underground and those who have been swept away,” Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told reporters. “The rescue operation will continue with all possible strength and means.”
More than 3,000 people had been evacuated and housed in 45 relief camps in the district, he said, and hundreds of professionals, including army soldiers, were searching for survivors with drones and sniffer dogs.
Vijayan, a survivor who only supplied his first name, claimed he awoke in the middle of the night to feel the ground shake and witness electric poles collapse.
“A couple of neighbours and I ran to nearby houses where we heard cries for help and took some of the injured to safety,” according to him.
“My father, mother, sister and her daughter were in the house and as I went towards them the next landslip hit with a roaring sound,” he told me. “I couldn’t do anything but cling to a window bar as I watched my mother and sister vanish into the muck.
According to a statement from the chief minister’s office, army engineers were deployed to assist with the construction of a replacement bridge after the one connecting the affected area to the nearby town of Chooralmala collapsed.
“A small team has managed to cross the bridge across the river and reach (the site), but we will need to send many more to provide help and start rescue operations,” Kerala chief secretary V. Venu told reporters.
A military helicopter was able to land at Mundakkai, one of the worst-hit places, where approximately 250 people were stranded on a mountaintop and at a tourist resort with no food and medication. They were previously inaccessible by plane owing to inclement weather, according to officials.
This was intended to speed up rescue efforts, with the injured being evacuated first, they said.
Although the area is a popular tourist attraction, local inhabitants were the most affected because all tourist trips had been cancelled since Monday owing to the rain.
According to Chief Minister Vijayan, many people were evacuated from the area prior to the landslides owing to heavy rain, which helped to lower the death toll.
The region was expected to receive 204 millimetres (8 inches) of rainfall but received 572 millimetres (22.5 inches) over 48 hours, he said, adding that in the aftermath of “climate change… rainfall and other natural disasters are sometimes unpredictable”.
More rain was expected over the state over the next five days, he warned, urging residents to take precautions.
Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, who won a seat in Wayanad in the recent general election but resigned because he was also elected in his family’s stronghold in the north, said he met with the state chief minister to guarantee collaboration with all authorities.
“The devastation unfolding in Wayanad is heartbreaking,” he wrote on X. “I have urged the union government to extend all possible support.”
Source: Reuters
