The state of Kerala and its people are sort of having a deja vu moment. An entire cluster of homes of plantation workers at a tea estate in Wayanad was swept away by a landslide on Thursday evening. Several are trapped under the debris and 200 are injured, officials said. Hundred people have been rescued, while two bodies have been found. Officials said the rescue operation may take 12 hours.
Teams of the Army, National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and the fire department are at the site. 22 people have been killed, flight operations at Cochin International Airport in Kerala have been stopped till 3 pm on Sunday due to heavy rain, airport officials said today.
The water level in Periyar river and a canal near the airport has been rising. Flight operations were stopped till 9 am today, but it had to be extended after the apron area at the Kochi airport got flooded, Cochin International Airport Ltd (CIAL) posted on its Facebook page.
A red alert has been issued for nine districts Ernakulam, Idukki, Thrissur, Palakkad, Malappuram, Kozhikode, Wayanad, Kannur and Kasargod in Kerala where rains have left some villages submerged and isolated from the rest of the state. Around 22,165 people have been evacuated to safety and are lodged in 315 camps across the state.
Schools and colleges are shut in all 14 districts of the southern state today, except state capital Thiruvananthapuram and Kollam. 42 lakh in Maharashtra, 45,000 in Karnataka, 8,000 in Kerala and 20,000 in Andhra Pradesh have been evacuated so far.
