A month has passed since Kerala received a spell of heavy rains that went on nonstop and ended up as a deluge that was second only to the Great Flood of 1924 in terms of disaster. In the last century, the state has seen floods in 1957 (a year after its formation) and then in 1962. What has it learned from the latest round calamity? We can perhaps be optimistic. The administrators have come up with a Rs 30,000-crore package for a project called Rebuild Kerala.
The '99 floods
The other day, a media activist wrote that one was unsure if Kerala learned anything from the Great Floods of ’99 (Malayalam Era which correspondents to AD 1924). It only shows our ignorance about environmental awareness. In fact, Sreemoolam Thirunal who ruled Travancore those days (1885-1924) took a post-deluge decision: the floodplains will from now on be only farmlands.
Houses will be built in places where water didn’t enter in that flood. Many of that time marked on walls the level up to which the waters rose. That became a base line for future construction of buildings, bridges and even roads.
Even today, you can find such markings on plaques along riverine Kerala’s south-central places such as Kalady, Bhoothathankettu, Aluva, Malayattur, Maramon, Idayaranmula, Ranni and Konni that were worst affected in the 1924 catastrophe when it rained nonstop for 27 days.
What happened thence?
Our forefathers, quoting history, note that a flood is a phenomenon that happens once in a blue moon. Like, in the cusp of a change of epoch. We all know the Biblical story of Noah’s Ark. We have records of floods along the Nile of Africa and the Sindhu of Indian subcontinent.
Kerala itself faced a flood in 1341 that destroyed coastal Muziris, leading to the formation of a new port town that came to be known as Kochi. Much more recently, we learned about the floods in Indian cities and states farther north and east.
The broad Brahmaputra has a constant propensity to swell up in monsoons and lick its banks away in a big way. The 2013 Uttarakhand floods, triggered by a cloudburst, sowed major disaster across the Himalayalan terrain along upper Ganga. Down the plains, that river routinely submerges places like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar during monsoons. In 2015, Chennai faced its worst deluge in recent history. The spectre returned to the metro last year. But Kerala thought these are places far away. We chose not to take any of these as lessons for us in a coastal state.
False sense of security
True, Kerala is by the Arabian Sea. Yet the strip of land has not historically seen major foreign invasions, wars or even natural calamities unlike with many other parts of the country. A quarter-century’s tag of ‘God’s Own Country’ made its people further feel is Kerala is indeed a blessed land not just for the tourists. Maybe it’s time we added a bit to that catchword: ‘A place to learn about climate change directly’.
Signs of a potential climactic and geographical catastrophe have been on for a while. In 2000, a tremor in hilly Erattupetta of the state’s southeast was recorded at 5.2 on the Richter scale. It’s no minor measure.
In fact, Kerala lies in a quake-prone zone of up to 6.5 on the Richter scale. Well, the only solace its residents can take is from the constant expert refrain that bouts of smaller temblors help the region release its stratospheric pressure, thus averting chances of bigger earthquakes. The dangers from above the earth, too, affect its people: every year a 100 Keralites die in lightning.
The 2004 tsunami, which had its giant waves travelling to the Arabian Sea coast from Indonesia, devastated several stretches of Kerala. It gave us a chance to learn in detail how much calamity-prone the state’s coasts are. Then, in November last year, the Ockhi further taught us about the vulnerability of Kerala to such calamities. It shattered our feeling that the state is cyclone-proof.
Dam management lessons
Today, Kerala stands much like the fragile Maldives that are an archipelago in one part of the Arabian Sea. In mid-August, the state had all its dams open amid heavy rains. Soon the whole of Kerala appeared like an arc of flood. Half of the state's 44 major rivers and 32 lakes/lagoons merged to form a sheet of water above its plains and midlands. By when the deluge receded, half the water had been emptied into the sea.
The state has experts and officials who peg the number of its dams around 100. In reality, Kerala is one state that doesn’t know how many dams it has within its boundaries. Reason: these reservoirs are being managed by different authorities ranging from the electricity board to the irrigation department. The Central Water Commission (CWC), which has authorities over several major reservoirs in the country, manages only two in Kerala.
The 1945-formed CWC, which is the apex technical organisation for use of water resources in India, gives alert when water levels rise in the country’s rivers, including the Cauvery, just across the Kerala border.
For the commission, all the 44 Kerala rivers are ones flowing westward south of the Tapti (in Madhya Pradesh). And the slender state will be provided with no information by the CWC on flood prospects. This should change. Kerala should submit an application to find a place in the CWC’s list of individual rivers. The state government has never thought of it.
No coordination
The catchment areas of Kerala are under the responsibility of the state’s electricity board (KSEB) and the departments of forest and revenue. One main problem is that none of these offices work in tandem or even passes on information to the state Disaster Management Authority.
The Indian Meteorological Department under the Union government routinely gives information on weather, but none of the pertinent Kerala offices take it particularly seriously.
In 1998, an Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services was set up in Hyderabad. It began giving out alerts for fishermen venturing into the sea, but not many felt comfortable taking them at face value.
In Thiruvanathapuram, the IMD office gives information to the state Secretariat over phone. For, the story goes that the fax messages it reels out lie unattended. Maybe this is an outdated story. Whatever, from now on, there is no place for laxity. For, climates are changing across the world, and Kerala can’t be an exception. This time the floods showed it. Next could be high tide, drought or an earthquake.
Weather info transmission
Weather studies around the globe go by averages. What is weather prediction? It is a basically a projection made on the basis of calculation of pertinent data spanning a century or two.
The arrival of supercomputers of late has improved chances of accuracy in the predictions, yet there are mistakes too. Reason: rising temperatures around the earth, leading to a fast change in climate.
As for Kerala, a Doppler radar in Thirvananthapuram cannot help predict, say, a cloudburst in hilly Idukki. For, it’s only for a maximum area of 70 km around it the device can produce velocity data about objects at a distance.
This is risky for Kerala, as Idukki has quite a few heavy reservoirs. There, even a minor earthquake can trigger a dam-burst in the forested area with thick inhabitation downstream.
If the common people feel like gathering information on such matters, one can only ring up the KSEB. The official there will plead ignorance, if at all (s)he picks the call. Such opacity is a major issue.
For instance, the Sabarigiri project sends its rain report to IMD very late. Most of the times, they are of no use by when the data reaches the weather office. This is just one example that shows how lightly we treat weather predictions.
(The writer is an award-winning journalist with Malayala Manorama, specialising in environment matters.)
