A day after a tribal family was rescued by a team of forest officials, four persons, who were stranded inside an isolated house at Padavettikunnu, were rescued by the army personnel on the fourth day of the search and rescue operation in the landslides-hit Wayanad on Friday.
Rescue workers found two men and two women inside a house and rescued them. A woman had suffered injuries and they will be shifted to a relief camp, Major General VT Mathew, General Officer Commanding, Karnataka and Kerala Sub Area, told a news channel.
Even as the army had informed Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Thursday that there is no possibility of finding any more survivors, the four persons were not found trapped beneath the debris but inside a house.
The rescued persons were identified as one Johnny, Joemol, Abraham and Christie. Johnny owned a plantation in Padavettikunnu, which is 3-kilometres away from Chooralmala.
A tribal family was rescued by a team of forest officials from a cave near Attamala on Thursday.
A tribal Krishnan, his wife and four children were found stranded near Soochipara waterfall. They had sought refuge in the area during the rainfall.
The possibility of people stranded in houses cut off from the outside world is not ruled out by the rescue workers.
Meanwhile, with well over 200 people missing, the search for dead bodies with the help of sniffer dogs resumed on Friday morning.
The search operation is being conducted on places where houses stood once. The slush and the availability of only limited number of excavators made the search operation difficult.
A rescue official said that they will have to dig 8 to 10-ft to reach a body before they were pulled out.
The rescuers said they need more machinery to assist the search operation.
Meanwhile, the survivors sheltered in relief camps stared at a bleak future with many of them having lost their house, property their close ones and neighbours. Many carried a list of names of people who are still missing. Against this backdrop, it cannot be stated that those who survived counted themselves as lucky.