MALAPPURAM: Despite daylong operations in landslide-hit Kavalappara, the rescue team failed to recover any missing body on Monday. According to the state government, 46 bodies have been recovered from the area in the past 11 days. A total of 13 bodies are still under debris.
The government reiterated its stand that it would continue rescue operations till the body of the last missing person is found or their kin permits to stop operations. The rescue officers said they would continue the search on Tuesday, and added they had completed searching 95 per cent of the area.
“The search in the remaining 5 per cent will resume on Tuesday. If the search gives zero result, we will have to start searching the entire area again,” said Moosa Vadakkethil, Malappuram district fire officer. He also said they would design a map to find the retrieval spots in the area for operations in the coming days.
“We will design a map of the location highlighting the spots of residences before the landslide. Then, we will draw the possible paths through which the landslide had taken away the houses. The search will again be conducted through these paths,” he added.
The search in a couple of spots identified by scientists from Hyderabad-based National Geophysical Research Institute also yielded no result on Monday. The radar technology was a failure in the area as the machines could not be used for such an operation in wet soil.