Wayanad Landslide Tragedy
Wayanad tragedy has struck the pulse of entire nation, also pointing out the hazards impacts of climate change.
The extent of devastation caused by landslides in Kerala’s Wayanad is not known yet, as rescue teams have not even reached the settlement first struck by the landslides, Governor Arif Mohammed Khan told NDTV as the death count in the calamity crossed the 200 mark on 31 July.
This year has seen a series of landslides around the world — from Yunnan in China in January to Papua New Guinea in May that killed more than 2,000 to Sulawesi island in Indonesia and Wayanad in Kerala in July.
The death toll from the series of landslides in Meppadi in Wayanad district had reached 276 on Thursday (August 1) morning, with at least 240 people still missing. Some 200 people are injured.
An eminent scientist Soman opined
The scale of the Wayanad tragedy is the direct result of unscientific land use patterns in the affected areas, an eminent scientist said explaining the role of tea plantations in the tragedy. “When the British set up tea plantations in areas of high altitude, they levelled the small gullies through which water flowed downstream, and settled their workers along the river terraces (levelled surfaces formed by sediments deposited by the river). Later, towns developed along these areas.”
“Water has memory, it remembers its course, even centuries after it was diverted. It’s dangerous to attempt to trick nature by occupying the path of a river,” he said.
Soman also pointed to another reason why Chooralmala and Mundakkai were unsuitable for human habitation. The area had experienced landslides of lesser intensity in 1984 and 2020. Soman said that the angular rocks point to the possibility that there had been other landslides too in the past century or before.
As a matter of fact ,
Landslides are natural phenomena that usually occur in mountainous regions with steep slopes. During a landslide, large amounts of rock, boulders,g
loose mud, soil, and debris roll down slopes and hillsides, gathering great momentum and often taking vegetation or buildings along.
Landslides caused by TRIGGERING FACTORS are intense rainfall, and anthropological activities such as thoughtless changes of land use, road and bridge building, haphazard and unscientific construction, and large-scale destruction of forests.
We too in Kashmir need to take collective steps to save our forests and waterbodies to protect ourselves from landslides.
