Landslides swept through tea estates in southern India’s Kerala state on Tuesday, killing over 50 people, authorities said, as hillsides collapsed after heavy rain and sent rivers of mud, water and boulders on homes of workers and villagers.
The hillsides gave way after midnight following torrential rainfall on Monday in the Wayanad district of Kerala, a state renowned as one of India’s most popular tourist destinations. Most of the victims were estate workers and their families who were asleep at the time in makeshift tents.
Television visuals showed relief personnel working amid uprooted trees and flattened tin structures as boulders lay strewn at the site with muddy water gushing through.
One man was stuck in chest-high mud for hours, television showed, struggling to free himself until rescue workers finally reached him.
“More than 50 dead bodies have been found but it is difficult to establish a proper count as many body parts have been spotted in the river,” the state chief minister’s spokesman, PM Manoj, told Reuters by phone.
Nearly 350 families lived in the affected region, mostly tea and cardamom estates, and 250 people had been rescued so far, state officials said. Many others are missing.
Army engineers were roped in to help build an alternate bridge after the one that linked the affected area to the nearest town of Chooralmala was destroyed, the chief minister’s office said in a statement.
The weather office said there was extremely heavy rainfall over north and central Kerala so far on Tuesday, with more rain predicted through the day.
Tuesday’s landslides are the worst disaster there since 2018 when heavy floods killed almost 400 people.
State cabinet minister M B Rajesh earlier said that at least 44 people were killed and 250 had been shifted to temporary shelters, but rescue efforts were hampered due to the collapse of a bridge.
“We fear the gravity of this tragedy is much more. Rescue operations are being carried out by various agencies on a war footing,” Rajesh said.
Rashid Padikkalparamban, a resident involved in the relief efforts, said there were at least three landslides in the area starting around midnight, which washed away the bridge connecting the Mundakkai estates to Chooralmala.
“Many people who were working in the estates and staying in makeshift tents inside are feared trapped or missing,” he said.
Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, who won the recently-contested general election from Wayanad, but resigned as he was also elected from his family bastion in the north, said he had spoken to the state chief minister to ensure coordination with all agencies.
“The devastation unfolding in Wayanad is heartbreaking,” he said in a message on X. “I have urged the union government to extend all possible support”.
