Hopes of finding more than 180 missing people alive in India’s Kerala state waned as rescue workers continued to search through mud and debris after landslides set off by torrential rains have killed at least 204 people, the authorities said.
The disaster was the worst in the southern state since deadly floods in 2018. More than 5,500 people have been rescued from hillside villages, according to a government spokesperson.“This is one of the worst natural calamities Kerala state has ever witnessed,” said Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, the state’s top elected official.
Rescue work remains challenging with more rains in the disaster area, said Vijayan’s spokesman PM Manoj, The Associated Press news agency reported.
Nearly 40 bodies were found downstream after being swept some 30km (19 miles) down the Chaliyar River from the area in Wayanad district where the main landslides occurred. Body parts were also recovered.
Manoj said 187 people were unaccounted for as of Thursday, and 186 people were injured. Local media reported most of the victims were tea estate workers.
Some 1,100 rescue personnel, helicopters and heavy equipment were involved in the operation. Images from the site showed rescue workers making their way through muck and floodwaters, while a land excavator was clearing the debris.
As of Thursday, both The Indian Express and The Times of India newspapers were reporting that as many as 276 people have been reported killed in the aftermath of the heavy rain and flooding that followed.
Torrents of mud and water swept through tea estates and villages in hilly areas in the district early on Tuesday, flattening houses and destroying a key bridge
"Rescue operations in Wayanad are continuing in full swing. Our land has never experienced such painful sights before," Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said.
The Wayanad district administration confirmed the deaths of 158 people in the calamity.
Earlier, addressing a press conference in Thiruvananthapuram, the chief minister said that so far, 144 bodies had been recovered. Among them, 79 are men and 64 women.
"As many as 191 people are still missing," according to the latest count.
Earlier in the day, a cabinet meeting chaired by CM Vijayan expressed condolences to the failies of those who lost their lives in the disaster.
Vijayan said the scenes in Mundakkai and Chooralmala areas of the district are devastating. "Both these areas have been completely destroyed," he said.
He added that efforts to rescue as many people as possible from the disaster zone are progressing well.
"In the two-day rescue operation, 1,592 people were rescued. This is the achievement of a coordinated and extensive mission to save so many people in a short span of time," Vijayan said.
He said that in the first phase, 206 people from 68 families in the nearby areas of the disaster were shifted to three camps."This includes 75 men, 88 women and 43 children," the chief minister said.
Following the landslide, 1,386 people who were stranded and those who were trapped in their homes were rescued as a result of the ongoing rescue mission.
"This includes 528 men, 559 women and 299 children who were shifted to seven camps. Two hundred and one people were rescued and taken to the hospital, of which 90 are currently undergoing treatment," he said.
Vijayan said that in Wayanad district, there are currently 8,017 people in 82 relief camps. This includes 19 pregnant women.
"There are eight camps in Meppadi, where 1,486 people from 421 families are currently staying," he said.
Meanwhile, rescue teams comprising the Army, Navy and NDRF are collectively looking for survivors by unearthing the debris and breaking into the remains of houses destroyed or covered up with mud in the landslides.
According to a Defence statement, army units deployed in the area rescued around 1,000 people from the affected areas till Tuesday night.
Additionally, the Air Force is carrying out aerial reconnaissance of the affected areas to coordinate search and rescue operations.
The landslides occurred around 2 am and 4.10 am on Tuesday catching people off-guard while they were sleeping, leading to a high number of casualties.
Harrowing scenes of dead bodies in sitting and lying positions inside destroyed houses could be seen as rescue operations resumed in the landslide-devastated Mundakkai hamlet on Wednesday morning.
The rescuers could reach many inland areas, which were totally cut off on Wednesday morning only.
Tiny makeshift bridges were erected over swollen rivers and excavators were engaged non-stop in removing piles of debris and boulders, with rescue missions continuing in the landslide-hit hamlet.
Rescue operators, including Army personnel, NDRF, state emergency service personnel, and local people, were fighting all odds to carry out the tough mission even as rain continued to lash several areas.
In Mundakkai, one of the badly affected villages, tiny bridges were erected using ropes and ladders to connect with the cut-off land and bring the people trapped there to safety.
There were tense moments when people, including women and children, were being brought to safer places through the narrow, makeshift bridges across gushing rivers.
In some places, rescuers formed human bridges using ropes to ensure the safe evacuation of people.Relentless downpours and howling winds hampered Wednesday’s search for survivors of landslides that struck Indian tea plantations and killed at least 150 people, most believed to be laborers and their families.
Days of torrential monsoon rains have battered the southern coastal state of Kerala, with blocked roads into the Wayanad district disaster area complicating relief efforts.
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.
Several who managed to flee the initial impact of the landslides found themselves caught in a nearby river that had burst its banks, volunteer rescuer Arun Dev told AFP at a hospital treating survivors.
“Those who escaped were swept away along with houses, temples and schools,” he said.
Senior police officer M.R. Ajith Kumar told AFP that around 500 people had been rescued since successive landslides struck before dawn on Tuesday.
“So far we have got more than 150 bodies,” he said.
“Still large areas are to be explored and searched to find out whether live people are there or not.”
Wayanad is famed for the tea estates that crisscross its hilly countryside, which rely on a large pool of laborers for planting and harvest.
A number of brick-walled row homes built to accommodate seasonal workers were inundated by a powerful wall of brown sludge as laborers and their families slept inside.
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 millimeters (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.
