August 6, 2020, was a dark day for Munnar town in Kerala. A landslide struck Pettimudi village at Rajamalai, killing over 80, most of who were plantation workers.
Two years later, on the same day, another similar incident was averted by sheer luck. Another massive landslide, which could have killed hundreds in Kundla Estate, got stuck on the Munnar-Vattavada route, after submerging a temple and two shops. No human casualty was reported; 175 families were shifted to a relief camp in the Pudukkudi division.
Experts say that except the coastal district of Alappuzha, all the other 13 are prone to landslides. And, about 8 per cent (1,400 sq. km.) of the area in the Western Ghats in Kerala is classified as critical zone for mass movements such as debris flow, landslides, slumps and rock falls.
Debris flow is the most prevalent and hazardous type of mass movement in Kerala. On July 28, Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh told Lok Sabha that Kerala recorded the maximum number of landslides in the country in the last seven years – of the 3,782 major landslides between 2015 and 2022; 2,239 (59.2 per cent) of these landslides were reported in Kerala. According to Dr S. Sreekumar, disaster risk consultant, Kerala Institute of Local Administration, 295 landslide-related causalities were reported in Kerala between 1961 and 2016. “There is a massive increase in death and damage rate as well as instances of landslides since 2018,” he says.
During the extreme and prolonged rainfall spell in August 2018, nearly 341 major landslides were reported from 10 districts in Kerala. Idukki alone saw 143 landslides, which killed 104. In 201, too, landslides caused over 120 deaths. If Pettimudi was the sorrow of 2020, Kokkayar-Kootickal (21 deaths, including nine children) became the disaster spot of 2021.
“The figures indicate that the exposure and vulnerability to landslides increased in this phase,” says Sreekumar. “It has affected the living conditions of many. Earlier, we used to face financial loss and crop loss, but the fatality rate was low. Flash floods are an important reason for landslides. However, there are other major causative factors too. A lot of construction activities are happening in our state in vulnerable areas. We built more roads and culverts. However, even now our engineering structures are being built based on the amount of rainfall and intensity of rainfall in older days. There is a need to rethink new or added risk factors while constructing roads or culverts. We are not providing room for the river in many places and this is an important factor for flash floods. Our unscientific construction mechanisms are major causes for the destruction we are facing.”
Following the disastrous events of 2018, the state disaster management authority released the landslide and flood susceptibility maps of Kerala in Geoinformation file formats on its website for public use. The Kerala SDMA was the first SDMA in the country to do so. “There have been many academic reports and studies too. I had prepared over 10 studies for different districts,” says Sreekumar. “But the issue is that this knowledge and technology is not often reaching the local self-governments or public. That is a major problem. The local self-governments or people are unaware of using these maps being prepared by experts. It is only when a disaster happens that someone would think about using these maps. If a disaster management plan is prepared at an LSG level, it should reach the people in a user-friendly format so that it will be easy for them to use it when a disaster happens. The disaster management plans will have the high-hazardous areas and the flood-prone zones marked. But giving this map alone won’t help. There should be a resource group at the local level to interpret the knowledge from these maps to the people.” Sreekumar adds that there should be more caution about the projects of LSGs. “For example, rainwater pits constructed in hilly areas. Before building a check dam or a rainwater pit, there should be a more scientific analysis,” he says. “Certain areas are not fit for building a rainwater pit or check dam, but the LSG may not know about these. So, we need a mechanism to strengthen and educate the LSGs. Some efforts are happening via institutions like KILA. We should ensure that our projects are not inviting new disasters.
“Only local panchayats can make a difference,” Sreekumar says. “Every ward must have an evacuation response team (ERT). There should be more local resource groups; they should be clear about their mission. If we can have all these functioning efficiently, we can surely reduce the fatality rate. Because, if a disaster happens, the first hour is the golden hour. How much we can do in that one hour, how fast we can move people to relief camps, all these are important. Convincing people to move to a relief camp is a major task, because many will be reluctant to do so. A local ERT will be more effective there.”