Situation still grave for Pathanamthitta, Idukki and Ernakulam as heavy rains predicted till August 20. People wade across a waterlogged street after being rescued from flood-affected regions following heavy monsoon rainfall in Kochi. (Photo: PTI) Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala is witnessing the worst flood in over 100 years with incessant rains over the last 10 days claiming over 300 lives and leaving over three lakh homeless. However, as a welcome relief for the people of the flood-ravaged state, the weather department has withdrawn red alert for all districts for today and orange alert has been issued for 10 districts and yellow alert for two. Still, the situation continues to remain grave for three districts -- Pathanamthitta, Idukki and Ernakulam -- for Sunday as heavy rains have been predicted for these districts till August 20. As rescue and relief operations continue in full swing, the Kerala government faces a difficult task in the coming weeks as several areas are reeling under food and power shortage and thousands of people are still awaiting evacuation. On Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi conducted an aerial survey of some of the flood-affected areas of the state and announced an immediate aid of Rs 500 crore. However, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had demanded Rs 2,000 crore as emergency assistance and said as per the initial assessment, the total loss was pegged at Rs 19,512 crore. Here are the LIVE updates of Kerala rains: 07:30 pm: CPI(M) cadres, along with Nemmara MLA K Babu, are carrying out rescue and relief operations in Palakkad. Photo: ANI | Twitter 07:15 pm: Odisha CM announced additional financial assistance of Rs 5 crore for Kerala from Chief Minister's Relief Fund. This is in addition to the Rs 5 crore sanctioned earlier. He has also ordered 500 MT of polythene sheets worth Rs 8 crore to be sent to Kerala. 06:00 pm: Relief material being loaded on INS Mysore at Mumbai. Photo: ANI | Twitter 05:20 pm: Massive landslides occurred today at Nelliyampathy hill roads in Palakkad. Road clearing operations are currently underway. Photo: ANI | Twitter 05:00 pm: The NDRF conducted onsite medical assistance for the flood-affected people at Urakam in Thrissur on Saturday. Onsite medical assistance for the flood affected people by #NDRF team at Urakam in Thrissur, Kerala pic.twitter.com/VfUxt6sK75 — NDRF (@NDRFHQ) August 18, 2018 04:10 pm: The Rapid Action Force (RAF) in Palakkad's Erumachery build a temporary bridge to block the flooding water. Deputy Commandant, RAF Coimbatore, said,"After dam gates were opened, overflowing water damaged roads and entered the paddy fields. The bridge will help to stop the overflow." Photo: ANI | Twitter 03:40 pm: Addressing reporters, Air Marshal B Suresh, Southern Air Command said, "Today, total 288 boats are available at air force station. Many river-rafting volunteers have been brought from Rishikesh. As many as 26 helicopters are in operation." 03:35 pm: ​50 water purifier machines worth Rs 2.5 crore will be airlifted from Begumpet (Telangana) to Kerala shortly, to provide clean drinking water. 03:30 pm: Telangana Home Minister Naini Narshimha Reddy handed over a cheque of Rs 25 crore to Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan earlier today. (Photo: ANI/Twitter) 03:00 pm: Glimpses of NDRF operations in Kerala today. 02:40 pm: INS Deepak has reached Kochi. The fleet replenishment tanker which was sent from Mumbai is disembarking rations, fresh water and mineral water at Cochin Port Trust Civil terminal. (Photo: Twitter | @indiannavy) 02:15 pm: A community kitchen setup at Kochi naval base. The kitchen is currently serving nearly 7,000 people affected due to floods. (Photo: ANI/Twitter) 02:00 pm: The Indian Air Force reached out to people stranded on roof-tops and air dropped relief materials in flood-hit areas on Sunday. 01:49 pm: "58 of our NDRF teams are deployed across 8 districts of the state. They're carrying out rescue an evacuation work and extending medical emergency aids. Now that rain has subsided to some extent, our teams are being relocated partly to worst-affected areas," said the Director General of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF). 58 of our NDRF teams are deployed across 8 districts of the state. They're carrying out rescue & evacuation work & extending medical emergency aids. Now that rain has subsided to some extent, our teams are being relocated partly to worst-affected areas: NDRF DG. #KeralaFloods pic.twitter.com/93Cl9aAJ6y — ANI (@ANI) August 19, 2018 01:46 pm: Union Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu said that a control room has been set up by DGCA which is working around the clock to aid stranded/affected passengers due to flight cancellations in Cochin. He also said a joint team comprising representatives from DGCA, BCAS, CISF, AAI and Indian Navy carried out an inspection of Cochin Naval Base to check the feasibility of scheduled operations from there. A Control Room has been set up by DGCA which is working around the clock 24x7 to aid stranded/affected passengers due to flight cancellations in Cochin. More than 2771 queries have been addressed by the control room till date. (3/n) — Suresh Prabhu (@sureshpprabhu) August 19, 2018 A Joint team comprising representatives from DGCA, BCAS, CISF, AAI and Indian Navy carried out inspection of #Cochin Naval Base today to check the feasibility of scheduled operations from there. Steps being taken to start operations with ATR-72 from Monday, 20th August. (5/n) — Suresh Prabhu (@sureshpprabhu) August 19, 2018 01:45 pm: Scheduled domestic airlines have mounted additional flights to/from Trivandrum, Calicut and Coimbatore airports to minimize passenger inconvenience. Nine foreign carriers have also rescheduled their flights to/from Trivandrum, Suresh Prabhu tweeted. Airlines are also displaying status of rescheduled and additional flights on their respective websites along with waiver of cancellation/change ticket charges. (2/n) — Suresh Prabhu (@sureshpprabhu) August 19, 2018 01:32 pm: National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) rescued a pregnant woman from Alappad village in Cherpu police station area. (Photo: Twitter | ANI) 01:24 pm: Road clearance work underway in Nelliyampathy hill station after multiple landslides damaged the roads. (Photo: Twitter | ANI) 01:15 am: Indian Air Force is working on war-footing to rescue people stranded in different parts of Kerala.<doc-sep>Rains have been relentless for the past several days. Fear of rising water entering our home has snatched away sleep. The thought of rushing out of the house in the middle of the night is frightening. ( IE) Rains have been relentless for the past several days. Fear of rising water entering our home has snatched away sleep. The thought of rushing out of the house in the middle of the night is frightening. The unprecedented rains lashing Kerala, which have flooded large swathes of the state, reached Palakkad town where my elderly parents live on August 9. When I called them from New Delhi in panic, they told me water had entered the ground floor of our two-story house. Furniture was floating, they said. The refrigerator had fallen; Utensils, knickknacks and clothes were swept away; the kitchen was gutted. With water filling all the rooms, they moved to the first floor, which is an independent unit. Thankfully, they had food stocks and there is a also kitchen on the first floor. Worried about their safety, I flew to Coimbatore on Monday, August 13, and took a bus for a one-hour ride to Palakkad. Mercifully, the rain had eased a little when I arrived a little after noon, and I could make it to the house without incident. The sight that greeted me was a shock. Our home for more than two decades was a mess, even though my father, who is 72, and 66-year-old mother, had cleaned up the ground floor with the help of neighbours. But rains continued to beat down relentlessly. A canal nearby, which joins Kalpathy river a few kilometers away, was overflowing, its brownish water slowly spilling out of the embankment and adding to the gurgling rivulets on the streets bisecting mostly single-story homes on both sides. Next day, the skies opened up and the heavy downpour lasted almost the entire day. The front yard was flooded. The flower garden which my mother had lovingly nurtured, even planting a now-thriving Christmas tree, was swamped. The only signs of vegetation were the two short hybrid coconut trees, their fronds and trunk sticking out defiantly above the muddy water. With no electricity, and mobiles phones running out of power, many of us in the colony were cut off from the outside world. We depended on word-of-mouth information from locals who would periodically visit the homes to check on residents. Those who still had mobile phone connectivity checked desperately on WhatsApp for information or tried to call rescue teams. Most of the time, the numbers were busy or just did not get connected. While shifting out was the main priority, another concern was about reptiles and poisonous snakes swarming in the brownish waters. On Wednesday, there was a respite. Only a drizzle most of the day! I went out and brought some groceries. But the worst was waiting for nightfall. After 8 p.m. it rained all night, the sound of the thick raindrops lashing against the tiled roof and shuttered windows was monotonous and scary. Every hour or so I would wake up and go to the front door to check the water level outside. Not that it would have made a difference. But I thought I could be prepared if I had to evacuate with my parents to a hotel or relatives place, also in a Palakkad neighbourhood that was still dry. Perhaps we should have left the previous day. Because soon after first light, the water rose steadily. Enough was enough I thought, and called a friend, who sent a group of young boys to extricate us. They came in an auto-rickshaw, parked it at the end of the street and waded through knee deep water to reach us, carrying with them a large metal cooking vessel, flattish and round, twice the size of cable TV antenna. The plan was to use it as a boat to ferry my parents to the auto. Jittery at first, my mother reluctantly sat on a plastic chair, which was positioned in the centre of the makeshift boat. Steeling herself, she held on tightly to the chair while the boys pulled the boat up to the auto. They came back to fetch my father in a similar fashion. I walked through the knee-deep slush, dropped them at a relative’s place and flew back to hot and humid New Delhi. Our neighbours, a septugenarian couple, decided to stay back in their home. “I hope things will back to normal soon … but we are afraid whether shutters of nearby dam will be raised further,” said the lady of the house known to us as Ambika chechi. She was talking about rising water levels at Malampuzha dam, which is the main water source for Palakkad as well as a picnic spot. A couple of days after his family was forced to move out of their rented premises, a middle-aged man was walking in knee-deep water to buy milk and other essential supplies. When I told him that the downpour is getting heavier, he said: “We have already seen the worst, what more can we prepare ourselves for. Let’s hope for the best”.<doc-sep>Palakkad relief Kerala Shashi Tharoor A relief camp in Palakkad Onam Tamil Nadu : Sohra asks ‘What next?’ This 65-year-old woman, with her kin, is put up at thecentre in Palakkad, the headquarter of’s largest district, which has given the country luminaries like OV Vijayan, E Sreedharan and“Don’t know,” she replies after a pause. Her anxious utterance echoes the uncertainty of the over half a million people of the state displaced by one of the worst floods in the country’s history.75-year-old Thuththumma lost her ancestral house, where she spent 55 years of her life. “I keep telling political leaders visiting the camp that I will not vacate the camp until I get a new house. They agree,” she says. Tragedy has not dented her sense of humour as she confides a secret. “My Aadhaar card mentions my age as 95. I am actually 75.”Sohra and Thuththumma are part of the 700-odd people sheltered at ‘Apna Ghar’ (yet to be inaugurated), the complex constructed for migrant workers in Palakkad. Overlooking the camp is the BEML (Bharat Earth Movers Limited) complex, from where defence helicopters keep taking off at regular intervals for relief and rescue works. On Monday, helicopters flew to Nelliyampathy, which remains cut off from other parts of the district, with food and medicines.The relief camp has three kitchens where the people are served black tea at 6.30 am, followed by breakfast at 8.15 am, which include ‘konji’ `upppumavu’ or `puttu,’ an egg and banana and a milk tea. The vegetarian lunch has sambar and aviyal and rice is served for dinner. “Initially we tried chapati for dinner. But people said they get proper sleep if only they ate rice. Hence, we switched to rice,” says A Aisha and Reji Basheer (of Kudumbasree Mission), who man one of the kitchens at the camp.Many inmates of the camp leave in the morning to clean their inundated houses while the men, most of them daily wagers, have started going to work. They return to the camp in the evening.A team of homoeopathy doctors, led by district medical officer Latha AG, Dr Prabhat, Dr Swapna, Dr Balamani, Dr Uma and Dr Hamsa, besides a psychologist, attend to the people at the camp.Kerala is trying to recover from a gargantuan tragedy. A visit to Palakkad relief camp and collection centres shows that people are not willing to give up. They are resilient. People are trying to move on, buoyed by the compassion pouring in from within and outside the state. Quite surprisingly, this correspondent noticed a long queue in front of anMarket outlet.An indoor stadium, the construction of which is not over yet, is serving as the collection centre, where materials moved in from outside the state is collected, sorted out and sent to relief camps in Palakkad. The stadium is abuzz with activity with volunteers, which comprise of college teachers and women students, who keep working 24X7 as trucks keep coming in, loaded with material from outside the state, particularly from. The volunteers sort out the things, make a kit and distribute it to the relief camp.Sunoja, who lately completed her degree course from Victoria College, joined the volunteers on Monday. “Our house got inundated with water. We shifted to a relative’s house and once the water receded, we returned home yesterday. I was able to serve in this collection centre only today,” she told Mirror.C Abhilash, who is spearheading the operation at the centre, said that at least 20 trucks arrive at the centre every day and the volunteers work 24 hours without tiring out.The situation in Nelliyampathy is not as grim, say the locals Yes, the village is marooned. But food and medicines were reaching the people living there.It is understood that 17 people died in Palakkad district in the recent floods. Of them, 11 died due to landslide while the others due to flooding. Nearly 9,822 people live in 107 relief camps in the district.The rail and road transport services have resumed in the city. One could see transport buses plying on the rain-battered roads. Several shops, including bakeries, hardware shops, tea stalls, hotels, dental clinics, photostat shops and Ayurveda pharmacies, were open on Monday although the customers are missing.Unfortunately, there are reports of mischievous elements trying to capitalise on the tragedy by exploiting the people. For instance, at the Palakkad relief camp, the wife of a casual labourer Ramani told Mirror that the rental house in which they were living collapsed in the floods. Now, they are searching for a new house. But the homeowners have ratcheted up the advance demanding Rs 20,000 for a two-room house, she said.Ironcially, many have pointed out that the catastrophe has brought to the fore the best human quality in the people of the state, who were otherwise divided into communal and political lines and were spitting venom against each other. "The floods brought them all together. People here also acknowledge with gratitude the generous helping hand extended by the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu," a native of the district said.As a testimony of the tides of compassion cradling the tragic-hit state is the gesture of a class II student of Vellore in Tamil Nadu. The girl Anu Priya donated her Rs 8,240, which she had saved over the past two years for the Kerala CM’s distress relief fund. She had actually saved the money, in coins, to buy a bicycle for her birthday. The Hero Cycles has responded to her compassionate gesture to Kerala flood victims by offering a bicycle free of cost to her.The LDF government has meanwhile claimed that the rescue mission following the catastrophe has reached the final phase. By now, nearly 8 lakh people have sought shelter in relief camps across the state.<doc-sep>Water gushing out of the spill way of Malampuzha Dam Gardens near the hanging bridge when the shutters were raised from 45 to 80 cm on Tuesday. (Photo: DC) Palakkad: The Palakkad district is staring at yet another bout of floods as in the past week, with heavy rains pounding most areas on Tuesday. The heavy rains prompted the engineers of irrigation department to open Chulliyar Dam in Muthalamada and Walayar Dams escalating the flood situation in the district. All the three shutters of Walayar Dam were opened on Tuesday by 5 cm, and all the four shutters at Malampuzha were raised from 45cm to 54cm and finally to 80cm in the day. The catchment area of the Malampuzha Dam received unrelenting rain all through the day. District Collector D. Balamurali has warned the people not to enter the river and canal waters. He also ordered for restriction of entry into tourist places having water bodies. A total of 14 relief camps have been opened in Palakkad taluk with as many as 2,064 inmates. While almost all the residential areas in Palakkad municipality which were built by reclaiming paddy fields are submerged in water, the outer regions of the town and the district are almost unaffected by the flooding. The Sundaram Colony in the town on the sidelines of irrigation canal from Malampuzha, where the houses were inundated with water during the floods last week, is again submerged in water. Water has entered several houses in Puthur, Olavakkode, Kalpathy and Sekharipuram on Tue-sday. The fire and rescue personnel were using rubber dinghies to shift people from isolated houses to relief camps. Meanwhile, at Attappalam region, the engineering wing of Indian Army reconstruction a washed away bridge within four hours on Tuesday afternoon to reconnect the mainland with an isolated area. A total of 32 jawans took part in the bridge work.<doc-sep>
A view of houses submerged in water following a flash flood, triggered by heavy rains, at Palakkad in Kerala. KOCHI: Five persons were killed in a landslide in Palakkad district of Kerala on Thursday even as torrential rains led to the collapse of the public transport system in many parts of the state with the southern Railways and Kochi Metro suspending operations. Palakkad district police sources said that five persons were killed in Nenmara, while two were rescued, taking the death toll to 72 in the current phase of Monsoon fury. Reports of a landslide have also come in from Thrissur district and some people are said to be missing, the sources said. Kerala floods live updates: Death toll rises to 79; additional NDRF teams rushed to the state Rise in flood waters in Periyar River due to the rains and opening of all shutters of all major dams including Mullaperiyar, Cheruthoni, part of Idukki reservoir, and Idamalayar, have severely affected lives of people in downstream areas. Here's how you can help flood-hit people of Kerala Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan once again called up Prime Minister Narendra Modi and apprised him of the flood situation in the state. The state has also sought the services of additional Army personnel and helicopters and the prime minister has assured all help, Vijayan said. "Spoke to Kerala CM Shri Pinarayi Vijayan again this morning. We discussed the flood situation in the state. Have asked Defence Ministry to further step up the rescue and relief operations across the state. Praying for the safety and well-being of the people of Kerala. @CMOKerala," the prime minister tweeted. The chief minister also called up Home Minister Rajnath Singh and spoke to him about the flood situation and sought more central help for relief and rescue operations. Floods continue to ravage most parts of Kerala, especially Pathanamthitta, Ernakukam and Alappuzha districts, where several people, including children and elderly, are trapped in their houses. Kochi Metro suspended operations on Thursday morning after flood waters entered the Muttom yard near Aluva and train services have been affected in various parts of the state with cancellation of many passenger trains and partial cancellation of some long distance train. "Kochi Metro train operation is suspended as the water level rose in Muttom yard area," a KMRL statement said. A high alert situation continues in all the 14 districts in the state. At least 24 people had lost their lives on a single day on Wednesday in the state, taking the death toll to 67. Over 1.5 lakh people have been moved to 1,067 relief camps across the State, sources said. In Pathnamthitta district Ranni, Kozhencherry and Aranmula are among the areas worst affected. NDRF teams have been sent to rescue people stranded in their waterlogged houses. Flood waters have reached even second floors of various homes and people have taken shelter in the terraces of their houses. They are trapped with no drinking water, food and power. Television visuals on Thursday morning showed Army personnel, who arrived in boats, rescuing an elderly person and few others trapped in a marooned house in Kozhencherry. Girls students of Aranmula Engineering College and their warden, who were stuck in the hostel, were rescued by Air force personnel. An Army contingent with boats reached the state capital on Wednesday night for the rescue operations in Ranni, Kozhhenchery and Aranmula areas. Due to land slip between Kulitturai-Eraniel stations in the Thiruvananthapuram-Nagercoil Junction section, some passenger trains were cancelled while a few others were partially cancelled. Cochin International Airport had on Thursday suspended all flight operations till Saturday as water entered the airport area following continuous rains and opening of dam shutters in Periyar River. A Defence spokesperson said the Navy has been getting several SoS calls from thousands of people marooned in their houses in many parts of central and south Kerala. The spokesperson said calls were being received from all over the region, adding it was, however, impossible to reach some specific people as everyone en route were in a similar situation and needed help. Hence, he said the Navy was operating as per the information being provided by the Kerala State Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA), which is coordinating the rescue and relief operations.