Central team visits landslide-hit Wayanad

Kozhikode: The

central

team, which reached the Wayanad district on Wednesday to assess the damage caused by last month’s floods and landslides, visited the calamity-hit areas including the site of the massive

landslide

at

Puthumala

. The four-member

team

led by joint secretary of ministry of home affairs Shri Prakash comprised agriculture department director K Manoharan, joint director of finance department S C Meena and deputy director of the department of power O P Suman.

District administration officials led by collector A R Ajayakumar and sub-collector N S K Umesh briefed the team about the losses sustained by the district in the floods and landslides.

In the presentation, the collector said that the calamities had claimed 19 lives in the district and the floods and landslides necessitated evacuation of 38,779 people from 10,077 families to relief camps.

The collector also informed the team that the district had received more than twice the amount of normal rainfall this year, and the high-intensity rains caused landslips in Puthumala, Vellarimala, Mangalassery, Perincherimala, Narikkuni, Manichuvadu, Muttilmala, Pachakkadu, Makkiyadu, Kurumbalakkotta, Kurichiyarmala and other places. As many as 472 houses were fully damaged and 7,230 houses were partially damaged in the calamities.

The team later visited Puthumala, where a massive landslide on August 8 had buried an entire village along with dozens of houses. The team members walked all the way uphill till Pachakkad, from where the landslide had originated.

The team also visited other landslide sites at Chooralmala, Attamala, Mundakkai, Kurichiarmala and Boy’s Town near Mananthavady. Meppadi panchayat president K K Sahad, district soil conservation officer P U Das, South Wayanad divisional forest officer P Ranjith Kumar, Kerala state disaster management authority hazard analyst Sreeja M U, among other officials, accompanied the team.