A month since Wayanad disaster, survivors’ accounts speak of scars that may never heal

At the Meppadi relief camp in Kerala’s Wayanad, a 65-year-old man examined the basic mobile phone that had been handed to him by a rescue volunteer. “Muthachan [grandpa], are you happy?” asked the volunteer, hugging the man’s shoulders. “Got a new phone?”

“Five of my family members have disappeared. I don’t have my home anymore,” said the elderly man, too drained to show emotion. “Where should I go? What should I do now? I don’t know. What will this phone do for me?”

Shivan, a resident of Chooralmala, is among the 2,500 survivors of landslides that struck Wayand district. A downpour triggered landslides in the villages of Punchiri Mattom, Mundakkai, Chooralmala and Attamala on July 30, wreaking devastation in the region. Rainfall of up to 372 mm was recorded in Puthumala nearby on July 30.

At least 420 people were killed, with 118 missing – presumed dead now. According to Kerala’s State Emergency Operational Centre, 231 bodies and 212 body parts were recovered.

Five neighbouring families were swept away in the muddy torrent before Shivan’s eyes. “Our house’s foundation isn’t even visible anymore,” said Sasi. The house where his family of three had built a life, celebrated birthdays, laughed and cried was now just a memory.

A month since the disaster, the Kerala government is looking to build community townships close by for the survivors. Social workers and psychiatrists are working with survivors to heal the psychological scars of the incident.

But as this account of the first few days of the devastation shows, there is a calamitous toll in surviving a calamity and that some wounds may never heal.

An explosion

In the houses around Mundakkai and Chooralmala, filled with muddy debris, wall clocks are frozen between 1.45 am and 2.40 am – they are static witnesses to the devastation of that night.

Vijayan knew what a cloudburst sounded like: a bomb exploding and then the howl of a jet taking off faraway. He had heard it during the 2019 floods in Kerala when there had been a cloudburst near Puthumala, just 5 kilometres from his home Chooralmala.

On July 30, it was the same sound that woke him up. He heard the first cloudburst at around 1.30 am and stepped outside – a muffled whisper faraway was audible. Something was terribly wrong and he began shouting: “Run”.

Vijayan alerted the three neighbouring houses in Chooralmala. They knew that the first floods must have already affected houses downstream.

As ground-level houses began flooding, Vijayan and three others directed 18 of their family members, including Vijayan’s parents and sister, to the safety of his neighbour Ouseph Chettan’s house. Twenty two-people were sheltering in that one-storey home. By then the sound had gotten even more shrill, like an approaching aircraft.

In an instant, a surge of water hit the foundation of Chettan’s house, sloshing against the walls of the house. Children asleep were thrown against the walls before they could even open their eyes.

A bridge of saris

The torrential rainfall and the landslide higher up had hurled down mud and boulders, changing the course of the Iruvanjippuzha river. Chettan’s house was one of the few solid structures in Chooralmala that had so far withstood the two channels of the river in spate.

It was between 3.30 am and 4 am and it was pitch dark. The power had been cut and batteries had run out. The roof of Chettan’s was unstable, made up of asbestos sheets, leaving no place to climb to for safety. The group knew they had to escape before the next downpour or the water raging around them rose further.

Vijayan and a few friends tied together as many saris as they could gather from the local women. Twisting them into a strong rope, Vijayan waded into the slush, his feet sinking into the mud below.

He tied the makeshift rope to the pillar of Sudarshan’s home 100 metres away and returned. Then, he began to help people across, at times even carrying them, through chest-high muddy slush.

Three people crossed the water clinging to Vijayan’s shoulders, their eyes closed as they screamed in horror. Vijayan got 16 people to the safety of the neighbour’s house where they climbed up to the solid concrete roof.

Vijayan went back and forth like this until 5 am. Five others were left, including his mother, sister and the house owner.

But the neck-level muddy water was now carrying with it boulders and rocks and he could not return to Chettan’s home. Vijayan said his mother clung to a metal rod from the ceiling for at least an hour-and-a-half until she disappeared.

Two days later, Vijayan returned to the spot with rescuers and dug through the mud with bare hands, looking for his mother’s remains.

“We have experienced heavy rains throughout our lives and have faced every challenge they brought,” said Vijayan. “We fought and survived for generations. But this time, we couldn’t.”

Staring at the damaged house where 22 people lived just a day before, Vijayan clenched his teeth and fell silent. His mother’s bed was still in front of what used to be their house. Vijayan is convinced that she was buried in the house and not washed away. She was there till the very end calling for help, he said.

Two bodies, including that of his sister, were recovered a day later on July 31. The house owner’s body was found near Pothukal village in Nilambur, 30 km downstream from Chooralmala. In Nilambur, along the Chaliyar river, more than 95 bodies or body parts were found on the first day of the floods. The bodies of the remaining three, including Vijayan’s mother, sheltering in Chettan’s house were never found.

Reliving a disaster

Like Vijayan, for those who survived the 2019 Puthumala floods, the landslide in July felt like they were reliving the disaster. In Mundakkai village, many fled their homes, leaving everything behind, as soon as they heard the cloudburst.

“We know the sound of a cloud burst – a bomb explosion,” said Nooruddin, a panchayat member of Meppadi and a survivor of the Puthumala landslide in 2019. Nooruddin had shifted to Mundakkai village after losing his house in Puthumala.

Many made frantic calls to relatives and friends living in Chooralmala, downstream. “We all started running uphill and my son-in-law in Chooralmala picked up the call by the third ring,” said Nooruddin. “I spoke to him, hardly for 10 seconds, and he went to open the door by which time water was reaching his waist.”

As the rainfall and landslides altered the course of the river, worsening the situation, the residents of Mundakkai ran as high as possible on the hill where they lived. They watched as their homes were engulfed by water and battered by rocks. The rocks, dislodged by the landslide and rain, had rolled down as far as 8km, some the size of two-storey buildings.

Nooruddin and his family and neighbours in Mundakkai survived. His timely phone call to relatives in Chooralmala saved them too.

Natives and migrants

Chooralmala and Mundakkai no longer exist as they did – they are altered forever. But they were popular and busy tourist destinations, drawing visitors and workers from various states. Chooralmala was a medley of diverse linguistic backgrounds.

The devastation that locals and the migrant workers suffered varied depending on where they lived. The locals who lived closer to the centre of Chooralmala and Mundakkai, bore the brunt of landslides.

The managers and labourers who worked on the tea estates in the region lived on the fringes of these farms in makeshift houses, locally known as “paady”, made of mud walls and local roof tiles or asbestos. They were affected more by the floodwater than landslides. Two migrant workers were killed and three others were missing. But more than 300 workers have been displaced, according to a nonprofit that works for the benefit of migrant workers.

Migrant workers may return once again. But many residents of Punchiri Mattam, Mundakkai, Attamala and Chooralmala have lost entire families – and everything. Those luckier may have had one or two family members survive to share their sorrows for the rest of their lives.

“I lost my house, car, shop and everything we owned,” said a resident of Chooralmala, who is sheltering at a government school relief camp in Meppadi with his wife and daughter. His parents, who were wounded by flowing rocks, have been hospitalised. “We have nothing left except the clothes on our bodies.”

Some narrowly escaped with their lives, like Arun, who was found half a kilometre downstream from his house, near the Vellarmala School ground, frantically waving his hands from neck-deep mud. He was rescued nine hours after the landslides struck.

Smoke and clouds

While walking in Meppadi on August 2, three days after the disaster, ambulance after ambulance drove by carrying the deceased wrapped in plastic and white cloth from government hospitals and crematorium. By evening, the pungent smell of burning flesh mixed with coconut oil filled the air. It took a few seconds to separate the moving clouds in the hills from the smoke of burning bodies. The bodies that had been identified, and in some cases, just the body parts, were being cremated.

An elderly man, who worked as a shopkeeper in Chooralmala for most of his life and moved down to Meppadi five years ago, said five neighbouring families were killed. “Today, my friends and neighbours from Chooralmala are among the 30 bodies being cremated,” he said.

Floating clouds bring down rain every 10 minutes, drenching the tea gardens in a fine mist. It is a mesmerising sight, a picture-perfect holiday. The lush green Western Ghats are beautiful as they are devastating.

In Wayanad, the hills will come down the river again – like they have in the past – erasing everything in their path. As survivors, we must decide whether to persist in our destructive ways or heed nature’s warnings and learn to coexist harmoniously.

S Shantharaju and Meljo Thomas Karakunnel teach at the Department of Media Studies, Christ University, Bengaluru.