The hunt for survivors of landslides that slammed Indian tea estates and killed at least 150 people on Wednesday was complicated by persistent downpours and howling winds. The majority of the victims are said to have been laborers and their families.
Relief operations are made more difficult by blocked roads into the Wayanad district disaster area, which has been severely damaged by days of intense monsoon rains in Kerala, a coastal state in southern India.
Rescue teams were forced to use a homemade zipline that was set up over raging flood waters to transport bodies on stretchers out of the disaster zone because the single bridge that connected the hardest-hit villages of Chooralmala and Mundakkai washed away.
Arun Dev, a volunteer rescuer, told AFP at a hospital treating survivors that some of the people who were able to escape the initial impact of the landslides ended up stranded in a nearby river that had completely burst its banks.
He claimed that “houses, temples, and schools were swept away along with those who escaped.”
Since many landslides occurred on Tuesday before daybreak, 500 people have been rescued, senior police official M.R. Ajith Kumar told AFP.
“We have received over 150 bodies thus far,” he stated.
“We still need to search and explore large areas to determine whether or not there are living people there.”
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