Wayanad/Thiruvananthapuram:

Some of the landslides-affected areas of the Wayanad district may be declared permanent “no habitation” zones following the large devastation caused to their topography, Kerala government authorities fear.

The aftermath of the July 30 disaster has left many survivors traumatised, with many not wanting to return to their homes and worried about an alternate roof on their heads, compensation and a means of livelihood.

Officials working to restore the lives of those affected, especially from the three worst-hit villages of Punchirimattam, Chooralmala and Mundakkai under the Meppadi panchayat, told PTI that human habitation in parts of the first two villages (wards numbered 10, 11 and 12) may not be possible in the future.

Another senior official working on the ground echoed this concern, saying the topography of certain areas has been “permanently altered” by the swollen and widened Gayathri river that carried massive rocks, gravel and uprooted trees, destroying everything in its path — houses, schools, temples and other public infrastructure.

The locals of the affected areas also share the same concern.

Rajesh T, 39, who ran a tailor shop in a shed next to his home in Punchirimattam, is devastated by the condition of his house, which his tree plantation worker parents build seven years ago with their limited savings.

“I cannot believe my house is all filled up with muck and the windows, gates everything has fallen apart. Two houses right in front of my home were washed away that night,” Rajesh says as he scours his house to find some documents.

I do not have confidence to live here anymore. Many people of this area who are in government hostels or rented accommodation share the same feeling. We are pinning our hope on the government to help us, he added.

Unais C, a 35-year-old goods auto driver from Mundakkai, is worried about the loss of 300 cement bags and some asbestos sheets that he had stored for sale in a hardware store.

“All the bags were washed away along with the shop. I had recently started the cement business to supplement my income so that I could feed my family. I have applied to the government for compensation and I am waiting to hear from them…,” he said.

Dance teacher Jithika Prem says the hurtling and roaring landslides on the fateful night was like a scene straight out of a scary movie. She feels “depressed” thinking about what happened to her house and the neighbours who lost their lives and, therefore, never wants to go back.

“I hope I will never have to go back there. I cannot live there. I wish we could get a dedicated public transport so that I can go to my school in Vellarmala and be with my students,” she says from her temporary shelter home in Kalpetta arranged by the local municipality.

Five other families, including that of couple Arif and Arifa, have also been shifted to the same centre with their three children.

Arif, a daily wager who lived in a rented house in Chooralmala for Rs 3,000 per month, says he is worried about finding a job and a new home.

“My family gets Rs 600 per day aid from the government. I lost my Aadhaar and ration cards in the landslides but got duplicates made at a special camp. I just want to settle at a permanent house away from the incident spot,” Arif says, expressing concern for his family whom he leaves behind for days at a time when he travels to Tamil Nadu in search of work.

People are struggling with various issues here. The government has helped them but more needs to be done to bring back their lives back to normal, a volunteer at the shelter said.

More than 200 people have lost their lives and an equal number of body parts have been found during search operations in the aftermath of the worst disaster ever faced by the state, which has a fragile ecology along its coasts and hilly areas.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

People who were stranded at Attamala after the landslide being evacuated through a temporary bridge on July 31, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Thulasi Kakkat

A team of geologists who surveyed the landslide-hit zone in Wayanad on Thursday (August 15, 2024) said a heavy rainfall-induced “damming effect” in a densely forested and uninhabited uphill region had caused the massive earthfall that wiped out three villages at Vythiri taluk in the Wayanad district of Kerala early on July 30. 

Geologist John Mathai, who heads the team of experts from the National Centre for Earth Science Studies (NCESC) investigating the landslide, told reporters at ground zero in Wayanad that the group’s finding was merely a “preliminary inference”.

 More detailed studies were underway, including soil testing and gauging seismic stability.

Mr. Mathai said 570 mm of rainfall caused the forested hillock to get waterlogged. The saturated soil flowed downwards, forming a temporary “dam” at Seethammakundu. 

The rain further boosted the scale of sodden topsoil discharge from uphill, straining the naturally formed dam and imperilling the slope’s stability. 

Mr. Mathai said that in the early hours of July 30, the debris outflow stretched the naturally formed barrage to breaking point. It soon collapsed under the momentum of the unabating inflow of soggy mud and debris, including uprooted trees, triggering the hillock slippage that decimated the villages an estimated 6.5 km downhill from the landslide’s provenance.

Mr. Mathai said Puncharimattom, the origin of the landslide, was no longer habitable. However, a large swathe of land at Chooralmala could be reclaimed for the construction of houses. He said the NCESC team would soon submit its final report to the Kerala government.

Search continues

Meanwhile, the harrowing search for bodies of the landslide victims continued downstream Chaliyar river in Nilambur taluk in the neighbouring Malappuram district. 

Speaking to reporters in Wayanad, Revenue Minister K. Rajan said 118 persons remained missing. Search teams were scouring the mud and debris the cascading landslide had deposited in the upstream Iruvanipuzha river and downstream Chaliyar for bodies. Central and State government forces were conducting the massive search operation, guided by handlers of cadaver-detecting trained sniffer dogs and local scouts and divers. 

Mr. Rajan said the search operations since the landslide yielded 212 body parts, about 173 from either bank of the Chaliyar river in Nilambur. Search teams scouring the river’s banks found 80 bodies out of the total 231 recovered so far. 

He said the government had divided the locality into five sectors so that search teams could cover as much ground as possible. The Minister also warned volunteers against undertaking search missions alone. He said mobile phone reception was patchy or non-existent in the forested regions abutting the disaster zone. “Volunteers could easily get lost or trapped.

The district administration might not know about their absence till it is too late”, Mr. Rajan said. He also warned that the rains were set to intensify over Kerala in the coming days and cautioned people against taking unnecessary risks. 

New Delhi:

The deadly landslides in Kerala’s ecologically fragile Wayanad district were triggered by a heavy burst of rainfall, made 10 per cent heavier by climate change, according to a new rapid attribution study by a global team of scientists.

The team of 24 researchers from India, Sweden, the US and the UK said that more than 140 mm of rainfall fell in a single day on soils highly saturated by two months of monsoon precipitation, triggering catastrophic landslides and floods that killed at least 231 people in Wayanad.

“The rainfall that triggered the landslides occurred in a region of Wayanad that has the highest landslide risk in the state. Even heavier downpours are expected as the climate warms, which underscores the urgency to prepare for similar landslides in northern Kerala,” Maja Vahlberg, a climate risk consultant at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said.

To measure the impact of human-caused climate change, the scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group analysed climate models with high enough resolution to accurately reflect rainfall in the relatively small study area.

The models indicated that the intensity of rainfall has increased by 10 per cent due to climate change, they said.

The models also predict a further four per cent increase in rainfall intensity if the average global temperature rises by two degrees Celsius compared to the 1850-1900 average.

The scientists, however, said there is a “high level of uncertainty” in the model results as the study area is small and mountainous with complex rainfall-climate dynamics.

Having said that, the increase in heavy one-day rainfall events aligns with a growing body of scientific evidence on extreme rainfall in a warming world, including in India, and the understanding that a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, leading to heavier downpours.

According to scientists, the atmosphere’s capacity to hold moisture increases by about 7 per cent for every one-degree Celsius rise in global temperature.

The earth’s global surface temperature has already increased by around 1.3 degrees Celsius due to the rapidly rising concentration of greenhouse gases, primarily Carbon Dioxide and Methane. Scientists say this is the reason behind worsening extreme weather events, such as droughts, heatwaves and floods worldwide.

The WWA scientists said that while the relationship between land cover, land use changes and landslide risk in Wayanad is not fully clear from existing studies, factors, such as quarrying for building materials and a 62 per cent reduction in forest cover may have increased the slopes’ susceptibility to landslides during heavy rainfall.

Other researchers have also linked the Wayanad landslides to a combination of forest cover loss, mining in fragile terrain and prolonged rain followed by heavy precipitation.

S Abhilash, the director of the Advanced Centre for Atmospheric Radar Research at Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT), had earlier told PTI that the warming of the Arabian Sea is leading to the formation of deep cloud systems, resulting in extremely heavy rainfall in Kerala in a short period and increasing the risk of landslides.

“Our research found that the southeast Arabian Sea is becoming warmer, causing the atmosphere above Kerala to become thermodynamically unstable. This instability is allowing the formation of deep clouds,” he had said.

According to the landslide atlas released by ISRO’s National Remote Sensing Centre last year, 10 out of the top 30 landslide-prone districts in India are in Kerala, with Wayanad ranked at the 13th spot.

A study published by Springer in 2021 said all landslide hotspots in Kerala are in the Western Ghats region and are concentrated in Idukki, Ernakulam, Kottayam, Wayanad, Kozhikode and Malappuram districts.

It said about 59 per cent of total landslides in Kerala have occurred in plantation areas.

A 2022 study on depleting forest cover in Wayanad showed that 62 per cent of forests in the district disappeared between 1950 and 2018, while plantation cover rose by around 1,800 per cent.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A damaged car at the landslide site in Wayanad following torrential downpours.
| Photo Credit: National Disaster Response Force/AFP

Heavy rain made about 10% stronger by human-caused climate change triggered the landslides that killed more than 200 people in India’s southern state of Kerala last month, a team of international scientists has concluded.

The landslides on July 30 in the coastal state’s Wayanad region were its worst disaster since 2018, when floods killed more than 400 people.

The study, released on Wednesday by the World Weather Attribution group, which examines the role of climate change in extreme weather, found that single-day monsoon downpours in Wayanad have become 10% heavier because of climate change.

Kerala’s Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had blamed unexpectedly heavy rainfall for the casualties, saying the region received 572 mm of rain over the preceding 48 hours, more than double the 204 mm forecast.

One-day bursts of rain in Kerala will become another 4% heavier if the world does not move away from fossil fuels and global warming reaches 2º C, the study said.

“The increase in climate change-driven rainfall found in this study is likely to increase the potential number of landslides that could be triggered in the future,” it said.

Minimising deforestation and quarrying, reinforcing susceptible slopes, and building retaining structures to protect vulnerable areas were some of the other measures it recommended to prevent similar disasters in future.

Some experts told Reuters earlier this month that heavy rainfall in the fortnight before the landslides, which softened the soil, as well as over-development and unchecked tourism in the state may also have been contributing factors.

“In addition to mitigation, adaptation is critical”, said Maja Vahlberg, one of the authors of the study, calling for more stringent assessment of landslides and better early warning and evacuation systems.

The landslides were the latest in a series of weather-related calamities in India that some experts have linked to climate change, from soaring temperatures and long heatwaves to torrential rains and cyclones.

The World Weather Attribution group concluded in a report in May that extreme temperatures in Asia the preceding month were made worse by human-driven climate change.

Thiruvananthapuram:

The second phase of the search for the missing persons in the Wayanad landslide disaster commenced on Sunday with the operation being carried out in six zones where the survivors will help in locating the spots.

The six zones include Chooralmala, Mundakkai and Punchiri Mattam. However, the operations in the risky terrain of Soochippara and downstream of the Chaliyar River will resume on Monday. At least 413 people lost their lives and 152 are still missing after the massive landslides hit Wayanad district of Kerala during the early hours of July 30.

Kerala Police, State Fire and Rescue Service personnel, survivors of the landslides, relatives of victims and volunteers of various service and youth outfits are part of the search operations.

Hundreds of civil volunteers, including women, are in the search teams and have crisscrossed the hilly regions. The Bailey Bridge, constructed by the Indian Army, is proving a boon to the locals and those involved in the relief and rescue mission.

Those people who registered for the work before 9 a.m. on Sunday were allowed to join the search operation.

The relatives and survivors from the relief camps are included in the search team to assist the rescue workers in identifying the places.

Cadaver dogs are also in the team to trace the spots where human remains are trapped under the debris.

Excavators will be used to remove the earth to search for the bodies after Cavadar dogs trace the spot, said officials.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the relatives are being made part of the search operations to find people who are still missing as all other possible means have been exhausted.

The search operations took a brief break on Friday afternoon as the area was handed over to the SPG after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the disaster-hit Mundakkai and Chooralmala regions of the northern hilly district of Kerala.

PM Modi visited the landslides-hit Wayanad district and assured that the Central government will “spare no effort” in helping Kerala in relief and rehabilitation while describing the tragedy as “nature displaying its furious form”.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Washington:

US President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden expressed condolences to India over the devastating landslides in Kerala’s Wayanad that took the lives of over 300 people.

“Jill and I extend our deepest condolences to all those affected by the deadly landslides in the state of Kerala in India,” the White House said in an official statement.

“Our prayers are with the victims of this tragic event, and we mourn with the families who have lost loved ones. We commend the bravery of the Indian service members and first responders supporting the complex recovery effort. We will continue to hold the people of India in our thoughts during this difficult time,” said the White House.

The number of people who died in the landslides that struck the hilly areas of Meppadi in Wayanad district on July 30 following incessant rainfall has gone up to 210 while the people who have been discharged from the hospitals stood at 187, officials said on Friday.

As per the officials, 210 bodies and 134 body parts have been recovered till now which includes 96 males, 85 females and 29 children.

The number of bodies identified by relatives stood at 146. The administration has completed the post-mortem of 207 bodies and 134 body parts found from the incident site.

According to the officials, 84 people are undergoing treatment in various hospitals in Wayanad, Kozhikode and Malappuram districts while 187 have been discharged.

273 people have been brought to hospitals from the incident site.

Earlier today, Kerala Health Minister Veena George confirmed 308 deaths in the multiple landslides that hit Wayanad on July 30.

Two massive landslides hit Wayanad’s Chooralmala and Mundakkai on July 30 creating widespread devastation, and loss of lives and property in the region.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Parliament on Wednesday took up a discussion on Wayanad landslide under a ‘calling attention’ motion. In his response, Union Home Minister Amit Shah made several claims on early warning systems in India and how they were utilised to alert the Kerala government ahead of the tragedy. The Hindu takes a closer look at these claims.

Read Wayanad landslides LIVE updates here

What the minister said:

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) press release dated July 18 issued on outlook for a flash flood risk in northern parts of Kerala (among other places) until 11.30 a.m. of July 19.

The extended range forecast, also issued on the same day for July 18-31, carried no mention of Kerala for the period, however.

The IMD press release published on July 23 warned of “very heavy rainfall at isolated places” in Kerala and Mahe on July 25 (suggesting action), and heavy rainfall over isolated/some places in Kerala and Mahe from July 23-27.

The visual sub-division-wise weather warnings under this forecast carried an orange alert for the State of Kerala for July 25, and a yellow “watch” alert for July July 23, 24, 26, and 27. A yellow alert doesn’t specifically call for action.

The press release published on July 25 said that “scattered to fairly widespread light to moderate rainfall accompanied with thunderstorm and lightning [was] very likely over Kerala & Mahe (and other places) over the next five days”, and heavy rainfall very likely at isolated places over Kerala and Mahe from July 25-29. Visual warnings, as depicted on maps, also showed a yellow alert for Kerala, which doesn’t call for action.

The extended range forecast for July 25-August 7 predicted “scattered to fairly widespread light to moderate rainfall accompanied with thunderstorm and lightning very likely over Kerala and Mahe [and other places], as well as heavy rainfall very likely at isolated places during the week”.

The July 29 press release by IMD issued an orange alert for very heavy rainfall at isolated places over Kerala and Mahe on July 29. The landslides occurred in the early hours of July 30.

A red alert for July 30 was issued in the press release published at 1.10 p.m., after the landslides had occurred. This press release also carried an orange alert for Kerala and Mahe for July 31 and August 1.

One Agromet forecast issued on July 23 for Wayanad district predicted 15 mm of rainfall in the district on July 30, the day when the landslides occurred after extremely heavy rainfall. Agromet, or the Agricultural Meteorlogy Division of IMD Pune, issues forecasts to minimise the impact of adverse weather on crops. Fifteen mm of rainfall is not cause for worry according to the IMD’s categorisation.

In its extended range forecast issued on July 25, IMD’s Meteorological Centre in Thiruvananthapuram predicted “cumulative above normal rainfall” for Kerala during July 2 to August 1, but did not raise any alarms or issue any warnings. August 2-8 was predicted to bring normal rainfall to the State.

The district rainfall forecast issued by the Thiruvananthapuram Met centre on July 26 predicted “light to moderate” rainfall for Wayanad district on July 30.

Mr. Shah also said in the Rajya Sabha that an early warning for rainfall more than 20 cm and possible landslide was issued to Kerala on July 26. The IMD press release published on the day carried no such warnings. Like the previous editions, it carried a yellow watch alert under visual sub-division-wise weather warnings.

After Mr. Shah’s remarks, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan also said that the forecasts issued by IMD, the Geological Survey of India (responsible for issuing alerts related to landslides), and the Central Water Commission (responsible for issuing alerts on river-related floods) were off the mark.

“None of the agencies had issued a red alert for Wayanad ahead of the July 30 landslides,” he said.

Mr. Vijayan also shared an image titled ‘Experimental Rainfall Induced Landslide Forecast Bulletin’ for Wayanad district, issued on July 29 for two days. The bulletin predicted a “low possibility” of occurrences of landslides. This information is not available in the public domain.

Following Mr. Shah’s remarks in Parliament, CPI(M) MPs in Rajya Sabha from Kerala, John Brittas, A.A. Rahim and V. Sivadasan, approached Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar requesting him to direct Mr. Shah to clarify his statement. Mr. Sivadasan also moved a privilege notice with the Rajya Sabha Secretary-General alleging that Mr. Shah had misled the Upper House and that action must be initiated against him for breach of privilege.

What the minister said:

This is incorrect. India set up the National Monsoon Mission in 2012 (now referred to as Monsoon Mission, MM) to improve the country’s monsoon prediction capabilities. According to the Ministry of Earth Sciences, the first phase of MM, called MM-I, was completed successfully in 2017.

MM-II began in September 2017 to focus on “predicting weather/climate extremes and development of climatic applications based on monsoon forecasts, especially in the field of agriculture, hydrology and energy sector, while continuing model development activities”.

MM-II is a part of Atmosphere and Climate Research – Modelling Observing Systems and Services (ACROSS). The Budget allocation for ACROSS, however, reduced drastically in 2024. In 2023, a total of ₹680 crore was allocated for it, and the revised estimate put this figure at ₹550 crore. In 2024, only ₹500 crore have been allocated for ACROSS.

What the minister said:

This claim lacks nuance. For cyclones particularly, the 2023 ‘Global status of multi-hazard early warning systems’ report by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk and Reduction (UNDRR) says, “Even with state-of-the-art forecasts, the risk associated with tropical cyclones for a particular location can only be updated 3–5 days before landfall.” Tropical cyclones have caused extensive damage in India over the years.

Roxy Matthew Koll, climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, said that cyclone forecasting in India has improved tremendously during the last few decades. “The forecast models that we have can predict cyclones one week in advance [in terms of identifying them]. Compared to the 1999 Odisha cyclone, the fatalities are now low because we can predict them in advance and evacuate people. Only a few countries have the capacity to develop and run their own models. Many other countries depend on global agencies for weather services. India is assisting South Asian nations in terms of weather services and capacity building,” he said. Since our ocean basins are relatively small compared to the Atlantic and Pacific, landfall happens quicker here which is why risks associated cyclones can only be predicted 3-5 days before the landfall.

Talking about the 2023 Cyclone Mocha, the UNDRR report said, “The Regional Specialised Meteorological Centre in New Delhi provided critical information and guidance products on the formation, projected path and intensity of the tropical cyclone 3–5 days ahead of landfall.”

For rain, IMD’s standard operating procedures on weather forecasting and warning services state that a red-colour warning for extremely heavy rainfall cannot be issued more than 48 hours in advance, as opposed to the “seven days in advance” claim by Mr. Shah. Extremely heavy rainfall, which means more than 20cm of rain in 24 hours, is denoted by a red colour warning by the IMD, and it means “take action”. Mr. Shah claimed that an early warning for rainfall more than 20 cm and possible landslide was issued to Kerala on July 26, which counters IMD’s SOP.

Prediction of exact location and intensity for extreme rainfall events can be erroneous not just for India but even in other forecasting systems around the world.

At least 151 people have died and about 186 others were injured after a series of landslides hit Kerala’s Wayanad district amid heavy rain yesterday.

Here Are 10 Updates On Kerala Landslides