The skies are opening up with a vengeance this monsoon in Kerala. While the landslide in Kozhikode raises questions on activities damaging ecology, the departments of Power, Irrigation and Groundwater have their fingers crossed to save enough for next summer. Express takes a look.
KOZHIKODE: Call it a classic case of ‘out of the frying pan into the fire’. Kozhikode had hardly bounced back from the Nipah virus outbreak when floods and landslides hit the district’s hilly areas. On Tuesday night, multiple landslides hit Anakkampoyil, Muripuzha and Kakkattupara areas of Thamarassery taluk. But it was just the beginning. In the early hours of Thursday, a major landslide jolted Karinchola in Kattippara village of Thamarassery taluk claiming a dozen lives.
Nature’s fury ravaged five acres, destroying four houses. But was this a natural disaster or a man-made one? Local people say they have never experienced such a landslide in the area before. “I have been living here for the past 17 years. Nothing of this sort has happened before,” said Mohammed Ali.
Illegal construction to blame?
The local residents at Karinchola point to an illegal check dam above the hill as the cause of the landslides.“A few months ago, someone from Malappuram had bought about 15 acres above the hill. They had carried out some construction in the area. They were known to be constructing a check dam to store water. But the activities were stopped when the people protested. This might have caused the landslide which occurred just below the construction site,” Ali said.
Neither the local panchayat nor the Revenue Department has a clue about such a construction. Kattippara panchayat president Baby Raveendran said they had not received any complaint from the people in connection with the construction.“We came to know about this through the media,” she said.
“The panchayat hasn’t given permission for any sort of construction. When we inquired, people say the private individuals who have bought land there were constructing a check dam or so. Usually, a person doesn’t need the permission of the panchayat to dig a pit to store water. We don’t know what happened in this case. We will definitely inquire about it and action will be taken if rules were violated.”
Chembrakunda ward member T P Muhammed Shahim, under whose limits Karinchola falls, echoed the same.“Nobody in the area had given me a complaint. And it isn’t easy to climb the hill to check it. As this has become a controversy, we called a meeting and will soon be visiting the place and action will be initiated,” he said.
Thamarassery tahsildar C Muhammed Rafeeq said, “We hadn’t found anything illegal with about 15 acres being bought by a person from Malappuram to start a farm or so. But we will conduct a detailed investigation into this.”District Collector U V Jose has ordered an investigation which will be conducted by a special team of the Disaster Management Special.
Thamarassery highly vulnerable: Study
The ‘Taluk-wise Hazard Population Vulnerability Map’ prepared by the State Emergency Operations Centre (SEOC) of the Department of Disaster Management, has identified Thamarassery taluk as ‘highly vulnerable’ to disasters. According to the study, 21 taluks in the state are highly vulnerable. While 35 taluks in the state are moderately vulnerable and 19 are least vulnerable.
Similarly, a study conducted by the Department of Geology in association with Michigan Technological University (USA) in 2017 found the Wayanad-Kozhikode border is highly vulnerable to landslides.
Assistant professor of Geology, University of Kerala K S Sajin Kumar who conducted the study said all the areas where landslides have occurred this time have been identified in their study.
“We have explained our conclusions in detail in our book ‘The Landslide Atlas of Kerala’,” he said. Most landslides in Kerala, he said, occurred during the monsoon season.
According to the study report, more than 20 per cent of the land area in Kozhikode district is prone to landslides. As much as 25 per cent of the land mass in Wayanad and 10 per cent in Kannur are also prone to landslides. Idukki is in the landslide hazard zone in the state with over 60 per cent of the land mass prone to disaster, says the report.
Sajin Kumar said the government has to adopt mechanisms in these areas to avoid the loss of human lives. “It doesn’t mean people shouldn’t live in such areas. It isn’t practical, considering the pressing need for more land in the state. But the government machinery can always analyse the probability of a landslide, which can be predicted using the method ‘rainfall threshold analysis’. In this case, we analyse the amount of rainfall to trigger a landslide in a particular area. It can easily be done by geology experts. If this is done, people can be alerted and lives can be saved,” he said.