People take shelter under umbrellas during a rain shower in New Delhi yesterday. Rains continued to batter several parts of India. In Kerala, heavy rains killed at least 15 people yesterday.

 

Agencies/Thiruvananthapuram

Landslides triggered by monsoon rains killed at least 15 people in Kerala yesterday, while the airport in Kochi was shut down, blocking more than 100 flights, officials said.

Multiple slips in the hill district of Idukki hit houses as well as buses and cars, police officer Telma George said.

“Rescue operations are on in the Adimali area where a bus and several cars have overturned on the highway. More bodies could be recovered and the death toll could rise,” she said.

The Periyar, the main river in the state, had risen close to its danger mark. Many houses built on slopes were swept away.

The airport in Kochi was water-logged, leading to its closure until today. In all, 126 flights were cancelled or delayed, affecting 11,000 passengers. Flights were diverted to Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode airports.

The hilly district of Idukki was the worst affected, as landslides were reported in 16 places, Revenue Minister Adoor Prakash said.

Cheeyapara near Munnar, the famous hill station, saw a huge mass of hillside slip. The incident occurred when vehicles were parked on the road beneath, witnesses said.

“Rescue operations were on to clear the road when the landslip occurred. Three vehicles were parked on the road nearby, and were pushed into a crevice by the falling mud. Five bodies were recovered from the vehicles,” a witness said, adding that the land mass that slipped is spread over nearly 200m.

“Only after the rescue operations are completed can we know how many vehicles are trapped under it,” the witness said.

Heavy rain has hampered rescue work. The state government has requested the aid of the defence forces in the rescue effort. Indian Navy personnel have already left for Idukki, a defence press release said.

S Rajendran, a legislator from Devikulam, under which Munnar falls, said that the situation that prevailed in Munnar has never been witnessed in the past five decades.

“For the past two days, heavy rain has caused so much damage to the roads. This is something unheard of in the recent history of Munnar. Landslides have been reported at a few places, and there is so much water on the roads that it is unsafe for motorists,” said Rajendran.

Chief Minister Oommen Chandy called for an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss the issue and sanctioned Rs200,000 as compensation to the families each of the dead. He asked special medical teams to be rushed to Idukki.

“In view of the heavy rains, it is in the interest of all tourists to put off their journey to Idukki district. Almost 200km of roads in the district have been damaged in rain and landslide,” Chandy told reporters.

Monsoon rains have caused the confirmed deaths of nearly 1,500 people in India, 900 of them in the northern state of Uttarakhand, since June 1.

More than 5,700 people missing since flooding in Uttarakhand were presumed dead, the authorities said.

The state was on high alert yesterday following meteorological predictions of heavy to very heavy rains over three days on top of the downpour that has crippled life in Dehradun.

*Rains in New Delhi brought relief to the people from the muggy weather but hit commuters due to traffic snarls.

“We have received several complaints of roads getting clogged, primarily due to the flooding of drains,” a traffic police officer said.