Deluge of information during rains in Kerala, what state lacks is actionable data

On August 5, Puthukkudy near Vattavada in Idukki district experienced a major landslide. Residents of the area had a providential escape as they had shifted to temporary shelter and their homes were spared as debris flow took a slightly different route. Otherwise it would have been a repeat of the Pettimudi landslide of 2020 that took 70 lives or the Puthumala and Kavalappara landslides of 2019 that claimed 34 lives.

Vattavada Panchayath President Ganapathiyammal told TNM that almost all families had shifted to a relief camp opened in a community hall four days ago. “While we were aware of the risk we had no specific information on areas prone to landslides. When rain intensifies, people shift to these shelters,” she said.

Many panchayat members in Vattavada said that people in the panchayat have no idea which area is prone to landslides. Though there is a flow of information from the authorities on rains, water level in dams and alerts on water release, experts say the state is way behind in scientific mapping of vulnerable areas and delivering actionable information.

A recent Times of India report said the Kerala State Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA) does not have details of past landslides in the state. The report was based on an RTI response from KSDMA, which is the nodal agency for disaster management in the state. The agency said the data was available with the Geological Survey of India (GSI). The KSDMA website however hosts a map of landslide susceptible zones in Kerala.

The GSI has completed a macro scale susceptibility mapping for 13 districts in the state in 2020, which could be used to identify vulnerabilities and develop zoning regulations for reducing threat of landslides. Location-specific actionable information is crucial to save lives. If the people of Pettimudi knew about the cloudburst and possible landslide, precious lives could have been saved. Even though local self-government and district administration pass information and warnings on time, there are many flaws in identifying vulnerable areas and information systems.

Absence of scientific mapping

KG Thara, former head of Disaster Management Centre, Kerala, says a government with no scientific temperament is our biggest drawback. “There should be studies using standardised scales. Different studies are on different scales. None of the maps published by the state government marking hazardous areas are georeferenced (associating a digital map in relation to the physical geography).  Even scientists are not open about it,” she alleged.

Thara said that since the present hazard maps are not to scale, the chances of error are also very high. “Parameters to identify flood or landslide vulnerable areas, like slope, amount of rainfall, soil thickness, permeability of soil and so on, should be uniform across the state and maps thus prepared should form the basis for preparing local action plans. Rapid Visual Screening can be done to delineate areas highly vulnerable to disasters, which later can be studied in detail," she said.

She said that detailed study and investigation at micro/ward level is the need of the hour. "We need in-depth micro-level analysis of every vulnerable area. We have enough geologists to do that in the state. We need to give them necessary directions and training to complete the task in a mission mode without delay,” she said. Effective communication on the extent of risk in each locality and educating the public was the next relevant step that the state should take up seriously, she claimed.

“People should know what can happen, how much time they have, to move to safety etc. They cannot always be expected to just pack things and wait for instructions from above. They need to be await what to do at the the time of yellow, orange or red alerts on their own," she said.

SP Ravi, Director of River Research Centre (RRC), an NGO based in Thrissur district says regular updation on maps that specify the disaster prone areas are necessary. “While preparing the maps, rainfall pattern of the particular year and cloudburst possibilities should be considered. We are way back in updation,” he said.

According to him, mapping will help people understand how to use the sloped terrain more sustainably to prevent disasters.

“In flood prone areas mapping should be done based on expected rainfall,” he said. The amount of rain Pettimudi and Kavalappara received before the tragedy was much higher than the official data, he said.

“Such maps created at the local body level should be available to the public and they should be able to comprehend the information, if the scientific work is to be meaningful,” he said.

Ravi says flood modelling is hardly done in the state. “There is no public data available on flood modelling of some rivers in the state. It's not easy to do that because we have so many factors. But we need to do at least a basic model and later improvise on it based on studies and experiments,” he added.

In August 2018, Kerala witnessed the massive flood of the century. Heavy rains also triggered several small and large landslides in high range areas. Kerala witnessed flooding on a limited scale and landslides in 2019 and 2020. Ever since, the lives of people living in hilly areas and river banks have changed. People are risk averse and hence willing to move out of flood-prone areas. But officials have complained that in some hilly regions in Idukki and Wayanad they had to force people to move to relief camps.

Ready to move, when it rains

Jibin Sunny, a 28-year-old youth, lives in rural Wayanad, not far away from Puthumala, where a major landslide claimed 17 lives on August 8, 2019. His family includes aged parents and  elder sister with physical disabilities. Now, every monsoon season they keep an emergency kit, which has items listed by the KSDMA, ready. “The kit apart from listed tools and medicines also has dry food items, cloth and napkins. After 2019, every monsoon we are prepared to seek another shelter if the rain intensifies. Many families here don’t even wait for a warning. If the rain increases, they will move to the house of a relative elsewhere. Since we have no other place we wait for a warning, so that we can move to a government shelter,” says Jibin.

People living on the shores of flood-prone rivers like Manimalayaar, Achankovil , Periyar, Chalakudy also seem to have accepted the vagrancy the monsoon season brings year after year.

Antony from Manimala in Kottayam says: ”Now we know how much flood the Manimayar will cause. We always keep important documents in plastic covers, move electronic goods upstairs. We are also planning to get fibreglass boats. Some families who live close to the river already  have them,” he says.

Priya and her family of four, residing in North Paravur of Ernakulam district, kept a bag ready to move to their grandmother’s house in the last week of July. The area where they live was flooded in 2018 and 2019 and they had to be rescued. “Whenever the rain intensifies and it's August, we are ready to move out,” says Priya.

There are many others who don’t have a place to move, but wait for a warning so that they can shift to temporary shelters. “When it rains heavily we look for updates on the KSDMA Facebook page. Now we can easily understand when they talk about water levels in dams, when they will be opened, the amount of rain and the low-pressure formation. Even my aged parents have picked up jargons,” says Albin AS from Idukki.