They fled for their lives as rocks and water pounded their doors. Now everything is buried in mud

WAYANAD, India (AP) — When Deva Das woke with a start to the roar of gushing water and rocks smashing against doors, he grabbed his parents and children and ran for higher ground.

The family trudged through slush and mud, climbed a hill and stayed there in the pouring rain for almost four hours. As daylight broke Tuesday, rescuers found the family and brought them down.

When the 40-year-old farm worker returned to his village in the southern Indian state of Kerala, there was almost nothing left. Homes were gone, buried in mud or swept away. Trees were uprooted and roads were swept away. Families were frantically searching for loved ones.

“It was a happy village,” Das said. “Now, everything is lost.” He lives in a center for internally displaced people.

At least 201 people have died in Kerala since Tuesday numerous landslides in the hills of Wayanad district sent torrents of mud, floodwaters and giant rolling boulders into villages below, burying people or carrying them several miles downstream. The disaster also left a trail of destruction behind it, leveling hundreds of homes and destroying roads and bridges.

Photos from the crash site show gashes in the green hillside where mud has slid as rescuers waded through knee-deep mud to find missing people. Nearly 40 bodies were found about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the main landslide area after being swept away by the Chaliyar River. In some cases, rescuers found only body parts.

Heavy lifting equipment reached some villages only on Thursday evening, when a bridge built by Indian Army engineers allowed vehicles to reach the worst-hit areas.

Rescuers are still recovering and identifying bodies, and with nearly 200 people still missing, the death toll is likely to rise, said Chief Minister Manoj, spokesman for Kerala’s top elected official. More than 5,500 people have been rescued from hillside villages and taken to relief centres.

Wayanad, a popular tourist destination, is known for its picturesque hills dotted with tea and cardamom plantations. It is also part of the ecologically sensitive Western Ghats, a mountain range running along India’s western coast.

The region is prone to heavy rains, floods and landslides. In 2018, nearly 500 people died in the state after one of the worst floods left a trail of destruction in its wake. Since then, a construction boom in the region has made it even more susceptible to floods and landslides.

Most of Tuesday’s victims were migrant tea and cardamom workers who lived in a series of settlements, some atop or near lush mountainsides. Other villages, including those buried by landslides, are clustered in the foothills.

The landslides followed days of rain. Some survivors said they knew the heavy rains would bring trouble.

Rakeeba, a tea plantation worker, said villagers were worried and had been advised to be careful.

When the first landslide hit her village at midnight Tuesday, the 45-year-old was asleep at home. When she looked around, water had already seeped into her home.

Concerned, Rakeeba ran up the hill and saw that part of the hillside above one of the villages had begun to give way before floodwaters and mud washed away everything in its path.

“We don’t know where we’re going to go now. Those who were there are no longer there,” she said, fighting back tears.