Lessons from nature’s fury

Rescuers carry the body of a landslide victim at Taliye near Mahad. Pic/AFP

By Sunday afternoon, about 150 people had died across the state, mostly on either side of the Sahyadri ranges, in rain-related incidents.

Over 100 people were reported missing. Landslides in three districts of Raigad, Ratnagiri and Satara had claimed 74 lives. The horror of a landslide that had buried the entire village Malin in Pune district in the Monsoon of 2014 was revived in village Taliye near Mahad where over 40 bodies have been recovered so far. Many are still missing. With the loss of lives and irreparable damages to the property and food stocks, the livelihood is expected to hit hard in the future, especially in the coastal belt of Konkan where tragedies have struck thrice in a span of 15 months. The beautiful region was struck by a cyclone last year when the coronavirus had just announced its arrival, and this year, it was another cyclone that turned paradise into hell, and now it is the fury of floods and landslides.

It may not be humanly possible to stop natural calamities from hitting us, but the damages they cause to the lives and properties can surely be minimised by alerting the vulnerable, rescuing and evacuating them before the fury goes beyond control. People in the places that have been devastated by heavy rains and landslides in the past week have a common grievance that the authorities failed in warning them in advance and responded too late after the incidents occurred. The sound bites coming in from the affected places are overflowing with blame that shifts only to the system. For example, Taliye wasn't included among the landslide-prone villages. It might have happened because the authorities entrusted with surveying the foothill, padas and hamlets for a possibility of landslide that natural processes like rainfall and erosion and geological causes can trigger, did not visit the village or overlooked it. There is a possibility of other residential sites missing in the survey document for similar reasons. The missing ones can be included among the vulnerable spots, requiring the government's urgent attention, only after a new survey without any scope for omission is commissioned at the earliest.

The early warning system, the easing of the access to the landslide-prone villages for evacuation and rescue measures, or relocating them to safer places before they get buried under the land mass, depends entirely on the errorless and convincing study, because rehabilitation is a tedious and time-consuming process. Before tragedy strikes, persuading the people to move out of a place they are so emotionally attached with because of the ancestral roots becomes a very tough job. Scientific findings with evidence that ‘they could be the next victim' can do the needful. Village Malin has been rehabilitated, so will be the survivors of Taliye and other affected padas, as the state government has announced post-tragedy.

The urban centres like Chiplun and Mahad have also suffered a lot. Chiplun residents said in the absence of early warning of the water rising they could not save their essentials, domestic appliances and other valuables. The business community has lost their entire merchandise. They said they could avoid major losses in 2005 because they were alerted much before the water level reached a dangerous perch.

Similar stories, with a difference here or there, could be heard from other places that are prone to flooding. A grievance that the emergency posts on social media, especially Twitter, did not receive response from the government authorities, must be looked into, considering significant spending of the taxpayers' money on the digital arm of public relations exercise.

Mumbai is no exception, but...

Mumbai is no exception when it comes to landslide deaths and fatal house collapses in heavy rain, but the metro must be seen in a different manner when it comes to examining the causes that trigger such incidents. A week ago, 30 people were killed in Chembur and Vikhroli when 2005-like incessant overnight rain caused a landslide that buried some hutments. The incidents shifted the focus to the settlements, mostly unauthorised, on hillocks and foothills. Some 94 landslide events have been reported between 2011 and 2018. On July 2, 2019, a major landslide incident had claimed the lives of 32 people.

As it bore the brunt for such incidents, the Mumbai civic corporation (BMC) had conducted a study of 299 landslide-prone residential sites in 20018-19. Some 60 were reported as dangerous and 20 were graded as the most dangerous, many of them in Ghatkopar and others in Bhandup, Sewri, Andheri West, Kurla, Chembur, Goregaon, Malad and Mulund. Recommendations made in consultation with the experts are yet to be implemented because of a multi-agency set-up of the city. The BMC says it is not responsible for these localities, mostly populated by squatters, because they are built on the land owned by the collector, housing agency or the forest department. While the district collector holds the BMC responsible for removing unauthorised structures on any land, the civic corporation says it has no such authority. As the agencies squabble, the number of huts on the hillocks, foothills, the public and private land, including wetlands, increase unabated. Rehabilitation or demolition? It's an unending debate.

Dharmendra Jore is political editor, mid-day. He tweets @dharmendrajore
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