The landslide that hit Wayanad, a hill station in Kerala has claimed over 100 lives. The local media in Kerala claim that the number of casualties has gone up to 150. Extremely heavy rainfall, a fragile ecology particularly vulnerable to landslides, and steadily increasing population all combined to trigger multiple landslides in Wayanad district on Tuesday. Experts say it is the biggest landslide related disaster in Kerala till date going by the number of people dead. Wayanad district received more than 140 mm of rainfall in the 24 hours between the mornings of Monday and Tuesday, about five times more than what is expected, data from India Meteorological Department (IMD) showed. Within the Wayanad district, several areas reported more than 300 mm of rainfall during this period. Now that disaster has struck scientists from the National Centre for Earth Science Studies based at Thiruvananthapuram have stated that there should be restrictions on land use and the general regulations taking into account the ecology have not been implemented.
The possibility of these landslides, in view of the expected rains, had been predicted by the IMD a couple of days ahead of the event. But with no mitigation plan in sight little could be done to save lives. Scientists say that there is need to assess how much rains result in saturation of the soil level in different areas and then define rainfall thresholds for landslides. Also, there is need to map out the routes that landslides are likely to take after they have been triggered. The susceptibility maps are there but the route maps were missing. Route maps would have enabled the scientists to mark out areas which should be out of bounds for settlements or any activities. Madhav Gadgil, former head of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Committee has earlier warned that this region could be wiped off the map if another landslide occurred. The panel headed by Gadgil had classified the region struck by Tuesday’s landslide as highly sensitive. Gadgil said the area which had been used by the British to grow tea now has quarries, resorts, artificial lakes and people who violated building laws. Gadgil had visited Wayanad in 2019 and warned that the Western Ghats were severely degraded and that if no action was taken, Kerala would face disaster within four to five years. His predictions hold true but the Government of Kerala ignored these warnings until disaster struck and claimed over 150 lives.
Closer home, the earth cutting activities around Pynursla areas to make way for the Shillong-Dawki highway seem ominous. There are landslide warnings every 500 metres. It is not known if any warnings have been given by geologists and ecologists on the impending disaster of cutting through unstable mountains. Add to this the thousands of quarries that have mushroomed across Meghalaya and we have a disaster in the making. But does anyone really care?
