MALAPPURAM: Six more bodies were recovered from the debris at Kavalappara on Sunday. Though experts from National Geophysical Research Institute in Hyderabad identified a couple of spots using Ground Penetrating Radars (GPRs), the search there ended in a fiasco.
Of the six bodies recovered, four have been identified as residents of Bhoothanam colony - Cheera, 60, wife of Perakan; Aanakkaran Palan; Sreelakshmi, 15, daughter of Sivan; and Sreedharan, 60, son of Appootty.
The remaining two victims are women.
However, they are yet to be identified. The total number of bodies recovered has gone up to 46. Search for the remaining 13 bodies will continue on Monday.
The six-member expert team from Hyderabad joined rescue workers early in the morning. The team comprising principal scientists Anand K. Pandey and Ratnakar Dhakate, technical assistant Dinesh K.
Sahadevan, senior research fellow Jonti Gogoi, junior research fellows Sateesh Varma and Sanjiv Kumar Gupta later in the evening stopped the spot identification process and returned to their camps.
“Our normal search identified six more bodies today. The scientists might go to Wayanad landslide areas tomorrow. However, we cannot say the radar operation was a complete failure. A couple of spots identified by them will be dug up tomorrow,” said Moosa Vadakkethil, Malappuram district fire officer.
Arun Bhaskar, Palakkad district fire officer, explained the radars were not apt for the conditions in Kavalappara.
“Radars identify objects beneath the earth using high-frequency radio waves. But the system will not work on wet soil. In Kavalappara, most of the spots are wet,” he said.
The search by the rescue team with 13 Hitachi excavators is to continue. So far, the rescue efforts have been successful with the team recovering five bodies on an average every day. The team expects to finish the mission in less than a week.