IDUKKI: Till a couple of weeks ago, Periyar Valley was a happy settlement for its 300-odd residents. About a kilometer away from Keerithodu, the village nestled amidst coffee plantations and areca nut farms was well-connected and nearly self-sufficient. Today, more than 30 of the 70 houses have been completely destroyed, while others have been severely damaged, making them inhabitable. The residents have abandoned the village. While most have been shifted to the relief camps, some have moved to their relatives’ homes, taking their livestock with them. While 10 houses situated on the banks of Periyar River were washed away, others got destroyed in the multiple landslides triggered from a nearby mountain.
Ravi Thadathil, 85, who was forced to abandon his home, said he has seen nothing like it in the past 45 years. Ravi’s family, along with other 33 families, was relocated to the area by the district administration during the commissioning of the Idukki dam in 1973. Caught between two disasters at the same time - flood and landslide - the situation of the residents here is now pathetic.
“I woke up in the morning only to find part of our land moved to a neighbour’s homestead,” said Ravi. “Before I knew it, a crack started developing right in the middle of the house, and in two days the house broke into two parts, and suddenly some of the cracks turned into water springs,” he said. When Express visited his house on Thursday, some of the cracks inside the home have grown 15 centimetres in width. In the fields, particularly those on a slight incline, slippages of several metres were also seen.
To reach the village, one now has to trek 1 km through cracked pathways ruined by landslides, making the village almost a ghost town. Ajayakumar, senior geologist at the Mining and Geology Department in Idukki said it appears to be an ‘Ascesmic Creep’ - a type of landslide in which the land mass moves along a downslope surface with multiple creeps appearing horizontally.“Heavy rain that saturates the soil - an increasing worry as climate change brings more extreme rainfall - might have caused such landslips,” he said. “Earthquakes and volcanoes can also trigger such events,” he said.“Though deluges have in the past caused landslides on steep slopes in the area, creeps here are unusual,” he added.