Seven years on, Kavalappara hill still holds its dead
At 5.30 p.m. on a rainy day, it is already dark at Muthappan Kunnu, Kavalappara. A concrete road through the hill remains partly intact but
At 5.30 p.m. on a rainy day, it is already dark at Muthappan Kunnu, Kavalappara. A concrete road through the hill remains partly intact but slippery. Empty houses stand amid thick undergrowth. Wild animals have increased. Rubber tappers avoid going alone and work only during the day. It feels like a place people have left behind. Eleven victims of the 2019 landslide are still buried somewhere beneath the mud, adding to the eerie silence of the abandoned settlement. On August 8, 2019, at 7.55 p.m., after two days of continuous rain, a portion of Muthappan Kunnu caved in. Fifty-nine people died. Only 48 bodies were recovered. The search continued for 19 days. The landslide destroyed about 34 acres and displaced 84 families. All but 18 houses were destroyed. The remaining houses were later evacuated after the government declared the area uninhabitable. Seven years later, the hill remains largely deserted, with vegetation taking over the abandoned settlement.
For those who survived, however, the disaster has not ended. “I do not know how I survived,” says V.R. Jayan, who was sitting on the porch of a house when the landslide struck. He was swept away and battered by the mud. Jayan suffered broken ribs and a severe injury to his foot that required a skin graft. He received treatment 17 hours after the disaster. “I am still under treatment. The physical and mental trauma continues,” he says. His knee, ribs and back still hurt. He continues to tap rubber for a living. For two years, he underwent treatment at a government Ayurveda hospital. The wound on his foot flares up every August. “Even after seven years, it happens. Maybe my body is rejecting the mud when the anniversary comes,” he says. Poothani Abdul Kareem, another survivor, suffered a broken leg. His wife was killed in the landslide. He was barely conscious when rescuers pulled him from the mud, with multiple fractures.
“Our bodies were shaken as if we had been put inside a concrete mixer for five minutes,” he says. Kareem has since remarried, but the trauma of that night remains fresh. Rehabilitation gave the displaced families new homes, but it did not erase what happened. NRI industrialist M.A. Yusuf Ali contributed ₹1.20 crore towards the construction of 33 houses, while P.V. Abdul Wahab, MP, also contributed to the rehabilitation effort. The government provided the land. It later built 27 houses for Scheduled Tribe families at Nettikkulam and 24 houses for families in the general category. Several other organisations also supported the rehabilitation. But many residents still avoid returning to Kavalappara, which now has the look of a deserted settlement. “People have started forgetting the tragedy. Only those who experienced its pain and fury cannot forget it,” Jayan says. The people of Kavalappara do not hold memorial events. “We do not want the old wounds to reopen,” says M.S. Dileep, a social worker.
The BriefWire