Dam burst fears spook Iritty

Nine persons were killed in heavy rains, flash floods and landslides that wreaked havoc in the hill regions of Kozhikode and Kannur districts on Monday.

Of them, eight deaths were reported from Pulloorampara in Kozhikode —five of them members of a family. One death occurred in Kannur.

Although the intensity of the rains came down by afternoon, the met department said rains in north Kerala will continue for one more day.

The dead in Kozhikode were Joseph, Eliama, Lisy, Amal(3), and Oyal(1) of Thundathil house in Aanakampoyil, Pulloorampara, a scene of flash floods.

Apart from this, Gopalan, Varkey of Manjuvayal in Kodancheri and Jyothsana of Aanakkampoyil were also killed.

Varkey, who was injured when flash floods washed away his house, died in hospital on Tuesday. In Iritty, eight-year-old Akshay, son of Dineshan hailing from Kunnothuparamba in Vallithode, drowned in a pool of water.

Panic gripped Iritty and nearby areas in Kannur on Tuesday as three more cases of landslides occurred there. Fresh landslides were reported from Kanhiramkolli, Vendakkamchal and Ulikkal.

Iritty town and nearby areas were almost submerged in water as shutters of the Pazhassi dam could not be opened.

The technical staff opened only 9 out of 16 shutters so far. According to officials, around 150 shops in Iritty town were flooded.

Around 125 families were evacuated from the area. About 20 houses were damaged fully and 300 houses partially.

A total loss of around Rs 2 crore has been reported so far from Kannur district, according to ADM N.T. Mathew.

Teams of the disaster management force from Tamil Nadu and Navy from Kochi have been rushed to the districts for relief and rescue operations.

Technical staff of the army from Thiruvananthapuram will also reach the spot to rectify the glitches in Pazhassi dam.

Home minister Thiruvanchur Radhakrishnan, revenue minister Adoor Prakash and water resources minister PJ Joseph visited the rain-hit areas of the Iritty regions.

In Polloorampara in the Kozhikode district, around 14 houses were damaged fully and 16 partially. Around 50 families were shifted to a school and other safe shelters near the region.

A total loss of around Rs.1 crore has been reported from the district so far, according to ADM K.P. Ramadevi.

The downpour caused four landslips in Pullorampara and several roads were swept away while large boulders and stones fell on the roads.

A bridge connecting the region to Kutyadi and Mananthavady has been submerged.

We prayed for rains, got a flood

“It is generally accepted among environmental geographers that there is no such thing as a natural disaster.

In every phase and aspect of a disaster – causes, vulnerability, preparedness, results and response, and reconstruction – the contours of disaster and the difference between who lives and who dies is to a greater or lesser extent a social calculus,” environment geographer Neil Smith at City University of New York commented when hurricane Katrina 2005 wreaked havoc in New Orleans in US.

The failure of Kerala Irrigation officials to open shutters of the Pazhassi dam in Kannur exposes the total lack of preparedness to a disaster in the making.

Although the purpose behind having shutters in a dam is to open them in case of an emergency, Pazhassi shutters failed to open on three occasions in the past three years.

“The inefficiency of officials is the reason for the disaster”, says M. Vijayakumar, district member of Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishat and native of Mattannur. They did not even have a proper office in the dam area for many years, he pointed out.

Mr Vijayakumar said it was important to have an office to monitor water levels in the reservoir 24/7. The Irrigation Department had set up an office here two years back, but no staff as yet.

The failure to open shutters with storage capacity of 49 million cubic meters of water has created the fear of a dam burst among the local people.

The expert sent by the irrigation department has also failed to do anything during the past 24 hours as the water level in the reservoir crossed the capacity of 27.4 m and spilled over.

This has flooded Iritty town and suburbs. Nearly 200 shops in the town are under water. The water level in the reservoir is estimated to up by 1.5 m as against the maximum level of 27.4 m.

Out of the 16 shutters, only eight have been opened so far. The dam was built over Valapattanam River at Kuyiloor near Mattannur, estimated at Rs 180 crore.

The project was commissioned in 1979.The project was originally intended irrigate 16,200 ha in Kannur.

But later it was scaled down to 11,200 ha. Now it is the main source for drinking water to the district. Pazhassi project caters to 12 KWA projects.

The blame for delayed remedial measures rests squarely with the government, says Irrigation official.
Two shutters were damaged in 2008 and 2010, which the department brought to the notice of the high-ups and sought repair funds.

Besides, the shortage of technical staff affected the timely maintenance and repair work, the official said.

“We’ve only three assistant engineers and one assistant executive engineer. It’s a vast area and we’ve only three overseers instead of 13,” he said.

The irrigation minister had promised to allocate Rs 7 crore for the maintenance of the Pazhassi project, but work progressed very slowly. Even primary level works such as greasing of shutters was not undertaken in a systematic manner.

IMD: Sign of monsoon strengthening

This heavy rain in isolated areas is not an exceptional phenomenon and is an indication of the strengthening of monsoon which had been weak over the last two months, according to the Indian Meteorological Department.

The heavy rain in certain northern parts of Kerala over the last few days is an indicator of this, says IMD director K Santosh.

There is nothing unusual since monsoon often extends up to September. The low pressure over the Orissa belt of the Bay of Bengal has been the cause of this spell of the monsoon.

This condition is likely to stay for some time across the state, he adds. It will be followed by a lull and another bout of heavy showers.

Short spurts of very heavy rain for a very short time earlier were indications of the weak monsoon. The situation has changed now, says Mr Santosh.

Safety not on police radar

Kerala police plainly has no pretentions to ensuring dam safety in a State, dotted with dams.
“As of now the State police does not have any specialised facilities for disaster management,” admits DGP Jacob Punnoose.

The State police has a sufficient infrastructure network to reach any remote location within one hour. However, to carry out rescue operations in case of a dam disaster, equipment such as earth mover was needed.

The police is more concerned about the security of dams rather than safety. The police provides security to nearly 20 major dams in the State.

A panel comprising officers of the State police, Intelligence Bureau and the departments concerned conducts security audit of all major reservoirs every three years.

According to police and intelligence sources, dams are often easy targets for extremists as these are remote-located.

Moreover, sabotaging a dam is a priority for anti-nationals as it puts human lives in danger. The State Intelligence also gives routine reports on dam security.

However an effective disaster management facility still remains as a distant dream for the force, says a police officer

2 warning stations coming up, long after tsunami

After the tsunami in 2004, Kerala took six years to come up with a disaster management policy. When the policy was brought out in 2010, the framers sounded as if they were in a desperate hurry to implement it.

Kerala is a multiple-hazard prone state. Floods, landslides, coastal erosion, earthquakes and cyclones could strike any moment. Dam bursts too could not be ruled out, the policy said.

No one but seems to have lost sleep. It was only in March this year that a Hazard Vulnerability and Risk Assessment (HVRA) Cell, the highly specialised team supposed to switch on the red light long before a catastrophe could strike, was formed. It is the Cell’s inputs that have to inform the State’s pre-disaster response.

But this cell will take longer to be operational across the State. It involves the installation of automated weather stations and other intense instrumentation on the field.

The first stations are coming up in Manimala and Meenachal, the State’s most vulnerable landslide spots.

There should be at least 100 automated weather response stations for early warning to be reasonably effective.

If HVRA units were operational in Kannur and Kozhikode, local people and the district administration could have been adequately forewarned.

“An HVRA cell can send out the warning at least 12 hours in advance,” said Dr Sekhar Kuriakose, the head of the HVRA cell.

“It’s not enough to locate potential hazard zones. We need to identify different elements at risk to evolve an optimal response,” he added.

He lost all that was dear to him

When the Cherussery hills in the lap of the Western Ghats unleashed their fury on Monday night, Biju, a truck driver lost all that had been dear to him.

His entire family was swept away in the flash floods. He was on his way back to Kozhikode with his truck loaded with timber on Monday evening, when disaster struck without a warning.

“It was only drizzling when I left home in the morning. I left without even an umbrella. Where did all this fury come from?,” he asked amid sobs.

A few people who were around remembered the old story that a disaster was imminent if muddy waters were to flood the Anakkampoyil road.

Biju lost his father Joseph, mother Elikkutti, wife Lissy, and children, three-and-a-half-year-old Alan and one-and-a-half-year-old Joyal, in the tragedy. Little Alan’s body was found on Monday itself and the others were recovered on Tuesday.