Kattippara (Kozhikode district): Fathima Fada escaped death by a whisker. The 12-year-old girl and her mother are the only surviving members of their family.
Fada lived in one of the four houses wiped off by a fatal landslide at Karinjola near Thamarassery on Thursday morning. She lost her little brother, her father and her grandfather.
Fada owes her life to mother Hannath, who yelled out to her children to run away as soon as she heard the terrible sound of the slide on the hilltop. Fada ran out, thinking that the rest of the family were after her.
She did not get into the first house on her way. That house was doomed too. Two little children died when boulders and mounts of soil rained on the house.
The terrified girl sought refuge in the next house and she was taken along with the other people in the area to the nearby school. She kept searching for her parents and brother, until someone came for her. She was taken to the local masjid in an ambulance, accompanied by her injured mother.
There she saw her little brother Jasim’s listless body wrapped in a white cloth. The people in the area could not console the mother and daughter.
Jasim’s body was the first to be taken out of the debris. Bodies of his father Jaffer and grandfather Abdu Rehman were found later.