A horrifying landslide disaster has killed at least 150 people with hundreds more feared to have been buried alive in tea plantations following ‘incessant’ rain in India.
Around 500 people have already been rescued in desperate search efforts since successive landslides devastated the coastal state of Kerala yesterday morning.
‘Still large areas are to be explored and searched to find out whether live people are there or not,’ senior police officer M.R. Ajith Kumar said.
But search efforts have been hampered by blocked roads, heavy monsoon rainfall and the collapse of a crucial bridge.
Many who escaped the initial impact of the disaster were later ‘swept away along with houses, temples and schools’ by a river breaking its banks, search teams said.
A rescuer consoles a man who lost his home following Tuesday’s landslides at Chooralmala
A woman cries as she waits at a health centre in Kerala’s Wayanad district on July 30 after landslides devastated the region, leaving at least 150 people dead
Rescuers stand next to a car washed away and damaged in the landslides, on Wednesday
Survivors wait at a health centre in Meppadi following landslides triggered by monsoon rains
A drone view shows a landslide site after multiple landslides in Kerala, on July 31
With the only bridge connecting the worst-hit villages of Chooralmala and Mundakkai washed away, rescue teams were forced to cart bodies on stretchers out of the disaster zone using a makeshift zipline erected over raging flood waters.
‘So far we have got more than 150 bodies,’ Mr Kumar told the AFP news agency.
A number of brick-walled row homes built to accommodate seasonal workers were inundated by a powerful wall of brown sludge as labourers and their families slept inside before dawn on Tuesday.
Other buildings were caked with mud as the force of the landslide scattered cars, corrugated iron and other debris around the disaster site.
‘Catastrophic debris flows are extremely violent, so survival is very difficult,’ Hull University earth scientist Dave Petley told AFP.
‘This will have been exacerbated by the timing – in the early hours when people were asleep – and by flimsy structures that offered little protection.’
More than 3,000 people were sheltering in emergency relief camps around Wayanad district, the state government said.
At least 572 millimetres (22.5 inches) of rain fell in the two days leading up to the landslides, according to state chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
Kerala’s disaster agency said more rain and strong winds were forecast for Thursday with the likelihood of ‘damage to unsafe structures’ elsewhere in the state.
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.
Monsoon rains across the region from June to September offer respite from the summer heat and are crucial to replenishing water supplies.
They are vital for agriculture – and therefore the livelihoods of millions of farmers, and food security for South Asia’s nearly two billion people – but they also bring regular destruction.
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,’ Kartiki Negi of the Indian environment think tank Climate Trends told AFP.
‘India will continue to see more and more of these kinds of impacts in the future,’ she added.
Damming, deforestation and development projects in India have also exacerbated the human toll.
India’s worst landslide in recent decades was in 1998, when rockfalls triggered by heavy monsoon rains killed at least 220 people and buried the tiny village of Malpa in the Himalayas.
Tea plantation workers move to the relief camps, after landslides in Wayanad on July 31
A damaged vehicle lies amid mud after landslides in Wayanad devastated the region
Medical staff transfer a body of a victim into an ambulance following a landslide at Meppadi
Relief personnel carry the body of a victim, during a search and rescue operation
Belongings of victims affected by landslides are washed away in Wayanad on July 31
