The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
An unending wait for expat who lost 26 relatives
SHOUKATH, 51, worked as an excavator operator for 30 years in the Middle East. On Friday, at his home in Mundakkai village in Kerala’s Wayanad, he watched as an excavator dug through the mud in search of his two brothers and 24 other family members.
Shoukath had rushed home from Qatar as soon as he heard about the devastating landslides that struck Mundakkai and surrounding areas early on July 30.
The toll from the landslides, which covered whole villages in mud and debris, rose to 210 on Friday. Another 218 people are still missing. The government does not expect to rescue anyone else alive.
“Everything is lost. My brothers, their families… Everyone is gone. So far, only four bodies have been recovered. My wife and son escaped only because they rushed to the hill after the first landslide. My twostorey house is gone too,” Shoukath said.
Though he left from Qatar as soon as he heard about the landslides, Shoukath reached Wayanad on July 31. However, he was able to get to Mundakkai village, where his family lived near each other, only on Friday.
The landslides had washed away the major bridge on the river Iruvazhinji, making it dif f icult for rescuers to reach Mundakkai. After several hours, some rescuers managed to get across the river using ropes. The next day, the Army and National Disaster Response Force teams managed to install a rope bridge, giving rescuers slightly better access to the village that was at the epicentre of the landslides.
A day after that, Army personnel completed the installation of a Bailey bridge, for which parts were flown in from New Delhi. While this gave further momentum to the rescue operation, officials were discouraging locals from crossing it and going to Mundakkai.
On Friday, Shoukath finally managed to get across the bridge and return to his village. By then, the rescue operation had turned into an effort to recover as many bodies as possible. Walking towards the area where his family’s houses once stood, he saw earth movers scooping out mud and moving boulders in search of bodies. There he saw his family’s neighbour, Mohanan, who lost five family members himself.
When Shoukat asked him about the fate of others in the neighbourhood, Mohanan simply said: “They’re all gone.” Among those were Mohanan’s mother, elder brother, sister- in- law and their two children.