It’s been over 24 hours since three landslides struck the hilly areas near Meppadi in Kerala’s Wayanad district, killing 158 people with many more still missing. Rescue operations have entered Day 2 even as the heavy rain slows down the process.
On Wednesday, units of the Indian Army, National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and other emergency service personnel deployed in Wayanad resumed their
search operations, looking under collapsed roofs and debris of destroyed houses for victims and possible survivors of the landslides.
Those who
survived the landslides, which struck the picturesque hamlets of Mundakkai, Chooralmala, Attamala, and Noolpuzha in the early hours of Tuesday, will perhaps carry the mental trauma of the experience for the rest of their lives. As one survivor, Prasanna, from Chooralmala told PTI: “I could only help my father. I carried him and ran towards the forest. I couldn’t help my sister. I couldn’t save her. Two of the children ran outside and got washed away. I could hear them screaming. Our house got washed away.”
While some ministers have called it a tragic incident — many opposition MPs in Parliament even called for it to be treated as a natural disaster — experts have said that climate change, fragile terrain and loss of forest cover created the perfect recipe for the devastating landslides.
We examine each of these reasons cited and how they made the landslides, perhaps, one of the deadliest in the country.
Climate change
Most experts have pinned the blame for the three landslides, which took place in four hours, on climate change. The southern state has been experiencing the worst effects of climate change for a few years now; in 2015, it experienced a severe drought, followed by
Cyclone Ockhi in 2017.
In the following years, there were significant landslides along with massive floods. In 2020, an avalanche crashed down on tea plantation workers in the Kanan Devan Hills of Idukki district, killing 65 people, mostly estate workers.
The Climate Report of India, released by the India Meteorological Department in January 2023, revealed that extreme weather events claimed 32 lives in Kerala in 2022. Moreover, in July 2022, the Ministry of Earth Sciences informed the Lok Sabha that Kerala witnessed the highest number of major landslides in the country over the past seven years. Of the 3,782 landslides between 2015 and 2022, 2,239 (nearly 59.2 per cent) were reported from Kerala.
Also read: What makes Kerala so vulnerable to landslides?
Experts explaining the situation said that the heavy rains on Monday and Tuesday had led to the quick landslides in Wayanad. S Abhilash, the director of the Advanced Centre for Atmospheric Radar Research at Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT), speaking to Times of India said that an active monsoon offshore trough has been affecting the entire Konkan region for the last two weeks, leading to saturated soil in Kasargod, Kannur, Wayanad, Calicut, and Malappuram districts.
A damaged jeep at an affected area following landslides triggered by heavy rain at Chooralmala, in Wayanad district, Kerala. PTI
He explained that a deep mesoscale cloud system formed off the coast in the Arabian Sea on Monday and led to extremely heavy rain in Wayanad, Kozhikode, Malappuram, and Kannur, resulting in localised landslides.
“Our research found that the southeast Arabian Sea is becoming warmer, causing the atmosphere above this region, including Kerala, to become thermodynamically unstable,” Abhilash told PTI.
Research carried out by Abhilash and others also revealed that rainfall over the west coast of India is becoming more convective.
And with more
rainfall comes the probability of more landslides, say experts.
Fragile terrain
Another big reason that contributed to making the Wayanad landslides so deadly is the terrain.
Elaborating further on this, KS Sajinkumar, an assistant professor of Geology at the University of Kerala, said to Indian Express, “The terrain here has two distinctive layers, a layer of soil sitting atop hard rocks. When a lot of rain happens, the soil gets saturated with moisture and water reaches the rocks and flows between the soil and the rock layers. This weakens the force that binds the soil to the rocks and triggers the movement. This is what seems to have happened in this instance as well.”
Rescuers and other stand amid debris after landslides hit hilly villages in Wayanad district, Kerala. PTI
Over 17,000 sq km of area in Kerala is tagged as landslide prone; the landslide atlas released by the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) National Remote Sensing Centre last year showed that 10 out of the 30 most landslide-prone districts in India were in Kerala, with Wayanad ranking thirteenth.
MG Manoj, a scientist from the Advanced Centre for Atmospheric Radar Research, also pointed out that the landslides showed characteristics of soil piping — a process that leads to the development of macropores (large, air-filled voids) in the subsurface that are associated with landslides.
Loss of green cover and human activities
The loss of green cover in Wayanad has exacerbated the situation, leading to the deadly landslides, add experts.
The southern state has been progressively losing its forest cover — as per a 2022 study, 62 per cent of forest cover disappeared in regions that are in Wayanad district now, between 1950 and 2018. Until the 1950s, 85 per cent of the total area of Wayanad was under forest cover, according to the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
Dozens are still missing after deadly landslides struck Wayanad in Kerala on Tuesday. PTI
As forest cover reduces, the soil loosens in the area, making it more prone to landslides.
Experts note that quarrying, hill levelling for construction, extensive road building, expansion in hilly areas, and mono-crop farming, all human activities, have also contributed to landslides.
In fact, the landslides are a reminder of why the Wayanad hill ranges should be declared ecologically sensitive. A panel set up by the government under ecologist Madhav Gadgil in 2011 recommended that the entire hill range be declared an ecologically sensitive area and divided into ecologically sensitive zones based on their ecological sensitivity. However, these recommendations have not been implemented even after 14 years due to resistance from state governments, industries and local communities.
Over-tourism has also led to a rise in the construction of several resorts in the highly fragile areas by influencing officials.
With inputs from agencies
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