Heavy rainfall ranging from 20-24 cm pummelled the hilly terrain of Kozhikode on two consecutive days last week. Result: A series of landslides that snuffed out 14 lives and left a trail of destruction in the district’s Thamarassery taluk. Fortunately, no landslide-related deaths were reported from the neighbouring districts Kannur and Wayanad, though major roads linking the state to Karnataka were washed away. So is heavy rainfall the lone culprit? No, say experts who pin the blame on rampant construction along the hills and building of illegal check dams to store water.
A hazard-vulnerability map prepared by the state disaster management wing has identified Thamarassery taluk as ‘highly vulnerable’ to disasters; another study had found the Wayanad-Kozhikode belt as prone to landslides. A water theme park, owned by an MLA, has come under the scanner due to its precarious location atop a hill. With recent landslides occurring within the park’s premises too, authorities have hurriedly issued a stop memo. A clampdown on illegal constructions and check dams would follow, one would think. But this is an unlikely outcome, the public believe. Even the MLA may have the last laugh, they fear, and a virtual ‘water bomb’ would once again start ticking.
With the threat of similar mishaps looming across Kerala’s ecologically fragile regions, a team of experts has suggested what is known as ‘rainfall threshold analysis’. In this, the volume of rainfall needed to trigger a landslide in an area is analysed and alerts issued to people when rainfall crosses a set limit. But the state disaster management authority has dismissed it as being too narrow and unreliable. The ball is now with the Geological Survey of India which is expected to bring out a foolproof alert mechanism by the end of 2019—a long wait. Meanwhile, the Nipah outbreak in certain localities of Kozhikode a month ago now seems a distant memory for many. From the tourism perspective, it is still a tough time for God’s Own Country.