Published: 31 July 2024
First reaction was panic as expats from affected areas woke up hearing the news on Tuesday morning
NT Bureau
Doha
Indian expats in Qatar are in deep shock and grief at the massive disaster that struck hilly areas of Wayanad district of Kerala, where at least 126 people have been killed in landslides triggered by torrential rains in the early hours of Tuesday.
Several dozens of people are still feared trapped and heart-wrenching scenes emerged from the disaster sites in the Meppadi area in Wayanad.
Expats in Qatar from Wayanad and surrounding areas woke up on Tuesday morning hearing reports of the tragedy and the first reaction was panic, with frantic calls being made to family members, relatives and friends back home to make sure all of them were safe, several expats from the area told News Trail.
The first landslide was reported at 2 am, followed by another at 4.10 am.
“My wife is from Wayanad and the first thing we did was to call our families and relatives to make sure all of them are safe,” Zubair Valiyaparambil, a Keralite expat and a QatarEnergy employee, said
Expats closely followed the news the whole day, with social media sites getting flooded with heart-wrenching images from the affected areas of people desperately searching for their loved ones and an entire swathe of a hilly area, where hundreds of people had stayed, turned muddy red and desolate amidst lush greenery, after the tragedy.
And almost everybody offered help.
“We posted messages in our WhatsApp group asking people to contact us if they needed any help and some of our people have rushed to the disaster site to help in the rescue efforts,” C T Siddique Cheruvadi, President of Chaliyar Doha, an organization of expats who are staying on the banks of Chaliyar river in Kerala, said.
Several bodies of the victims were found floating in the Chaliyar river.
“According to information we received from our friends there, more than 50 bodies were recovered from Chaliyar at a place where the river originates. Actually, the disaster site is around 25 kilometres away, and these bodies came floating in water that gushed down the hillside, which shows the magnitude of the tragedy,” Siddique added.
“The news we are getting is heart-breaking. The family of my batchmate at college was also in the affected area,” another person wrote in a WhatsApp group.
Chief Minister Pinari Vijayan told a press conference that the landslide has wiped out an entire area and it’s the worst disaster to hit Kerala since 2018, when deadly floods killed more than 400 people.
Rescue operations are under way, but are being hindered by heavy rains and the collapse of a crucial bridge.
The death toll is likely to increase and rescue efforts will have to continue for several days considering the immensity of the disaster.
