Many areas of Kerala’s mountainous Idukki district where rain-triggered landslides killed at least 14 people since last Sunday felt somewhat relieved on Thursday as the sun shone bright after several days of heavy downpour but it is now obvious that at least some of those tragedies could have been avoided had the authorities listened to warnings issued by scientists well in advance.
According to scientists and environmentalists, the landslips and mudslides that occurred in Idukki — which houses a large portion of the highly eco-sensitive Western Ghats — earlier this week was largely the result of unrestrained human intervention in geologically and environmentally sensitive zones as in the case of the recent catastrophe in Uttarakhand.
Scientists of the Centre for Earth Science Studies and the Disaster Management Department had given specific warnings on the possibility of landslides at several regions of Idukki district at the peak of the monsoon activity even before the start of the season but the Government had allegedly turned a blind eye towards those warnings.
Apart from ignoring the warnings, the Government had also informed the Governor that the State was equipped to meet any emergency arising out of the monsoon when there was no preparedness practically. The Revenue Department had convened a pre-monsoon meeting of different departments to assess the State’s preparedness to meet the rainy season.
After this, the Disaster Management Department had handed over to the Government the details of possibilities of disasters after conducing landslide probability mapping in Idukki district. It had also mentioned the steps to be taken to prepare the people in the landslide-prone areas for the season but the authorities had neglected all this, it is said.
One of the main instructions given by the department was not to allow water-logging at hillsides with over 25 degrees slant. The importance of this instruction was learned only after Monday’s landslide at Cheeyappara in which five lives were lost. Another advice was to close down all granite quarries in the region till the monsoon was over. This also was ignored.
Idukki had seen at least 60 landslides and mudslips of varying intensities in the four days starting Sunday after the rains strengthened across the high range region. The district had remained cut off from the outer world for at least two days as roads were covered in mud and rocks at several points. Famous hill resort Munnar witnessed one of the worst floods in recent history.
The landslides and floods witnessed in the past one week in Idukki district have led to resumption of discussions over the Madhav Gadgil committee report on the need to preserve the Western Ghats. Even the so-called pro-development politicians are now admitting that the Gadgil panel recommendations cannot be rejected totally.
“Idukki district today is a typical example of why human habitats should not be developed at the cost of Nature,” says Idukki-based environmentalist VK Babu. “There is not even a single brook that has not been blocked. The district has at least 22 big dams including India’s largest arch dam. All these have affected the region’s environmental and geological stability,” he says.
Almost one third of the forests in Idukki have been transformed into plantations and farmlands by levelling mighty hills, something the geology of this region does not allow, Babu argues. The district, most parts of which were dense jungles once, now houses at least six large towns and has a huge network of roads for which several hillsides have been razed.
The biggest problem with Idukki, according to environmentalist Jayakumar, is that there is no disaster management system in place even though fears are always expressed over the condition of dams like the 117-year-old Mullaperiyar.