Death rains on Wayanad

Wayanad landslides: Devastating landslides in Kerala's Vellarimala range wipe out villages, leaving hundreds dead and missing, triggering rescue efforts.

Trigger warning: The following article has disturbing details.

In the early, dark hours of July 30, nature staged a macabre dance on two sleepy villages in the lap of the Vellarimala range in the Western Ghats. In a few minutes, roughly 200 households in the biggest ever landslide in Kerala’s history, were wiped out.

When the sun rose in the morning, Mundakkai and Chooralmala, twin settlements in Wayanad’s Vellarimala village in Mepadi panchayat had vanished, transforming a landscape of rolling hills into a horrifying trail of havoc. A couple of landslides that Vellarimala unleashed at 1 a.m. and 4:10 a.m. have killed 308 people so far and injured about 200. The number of people missing is still nearly 300.

The Indian Space Research Organisation’s National Remote Sensing Centre would later release satellite images showing that 86,000 square metres of land had simply slipped out of place. The swift flowing debris, from crown to run-out zone, lasted 8 km. The landslide plunged into the Iruvazhinjipuzha, one of the tributaries of the Chaliyar river, swollen with the rain, changing its course. The combination of cascading heavy mud and gushing water took its toll.

The last time Kerala witnessed this sort of devastation was during the floods of 2018 that claimed 480 lives and affected over 5 million people.

Rescue and relief was quick, with over 1,800 personnel of the Indian Army, Navy, Airforce; Indian Coast Guard Disaster Relief Team; and the National and State level Disaster Response Forces coming in. State forces from the forest, excise, and motor vehicle departments are providing logistical support.

Now, families count missing loved ones. Every family has losses, some more than others. “I lost my sister Afeeda, her husband Sattar, and their children Filu, Adi, and Sanu at Mundakkai. Twenty-five members of Sattar’s family have disappeared,” says Sakeer K., a construction worker who had asked his sister to come to his house at Nellimunda, a couple of kilometres away, far from the river. “I feared for them as it was raining unusually heavy that night.”