With all the post-flood debris left on its lap, Pampa River wears a haunted look right where lakhs converge every year, at the beginning point of their trek to the Ayyappa Temple at Sabarimala. The mangled remains of steel structures on the riverbed and the wreckage of a few concrete buildings that had collapsed in the recent flood fury have left the once serene Pampa in the foothills of Sabarimala almost similar to a picture from a war zone.
The river has changed its course here with one branch of the Pampa flowing by what used to be the service road on the east and the other by the mainland on the western side. The sandy bank where the massive Ramamurthy Mandapam stood till a fortnight ago has become an islet where nothing other than a heap of stones and the remains of giant trees uprooted by the flood waters remain. Bereft of power supply and transport facility, Sabarimala remains totally cut off from the mainland even a fortnight after the flood.
Diesel generators are now the only source of power here and they are being used to operate various key installations such as the pump houses and the lighting systems at the sanctum.
Rising waters
The river remains swollen thanks to incessant inflow into the Kochu Pampa dam as well as the Kakki-Anathode reservoirs of the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) in the upstream reaches, coupled with the heavy rainfall in the forests from August 9 to 16. With the water level in the dams crossing the full reservoir level, the KSEB authorities were left with little option but to lift the dam shutters at 11.30 am on August 9. The outflow from the dams went up considerably in the subsequent days as rains continued to batter the forest interiors. A series of landslides and landslips in the interior forests further accelerated the inflow into the dams as well as the river system.
Dam Safety Authority executive engineer K.Ganesan told The Hindu that the catchment areas of the Sabarigiri reservoirs had received the highest ever rainfall from August 13 to 16. According to him, the Kakki and Pampa areas received 1,033 mm rainfall in four days. The catchment areas of the Kakki-Anathode reservoirs and the Kochu Pampa dam had never witnessed such incessant rainfall or the several landslides in the forests. “We cannot rule out the possibility of a cloud-burst like situation inside the forests during the period,” he said, and added that both the dams have now been closed to facilitate the civil works launched by the TDB and Water Resources Department at Pampa to clear the roads leading to Pampa Manalpuram.
The banks of the Pampa (Manalpuram) and the Triveni bathing ghats got fully submerged in the flood. By August 15, the Ramamurthy Mandapam, which used to accommodate 3,000 to 4,000 people during the annual pilgrim season, was washed away in the flood fury. The toilet complexes on the banks of the Pampa were heavily flooded and silted. A portion of the long shed (Nadappanthal) at Pampa Manalpuram too was destroyed by the strong currents.
Way to go
The pumping station of the Kerala Water Authority, that had been catering to the drinking water needs of Pampa and on the Pampa-Appachimedu stretch of the Sabarimala trekking path, was fully submerged in the flood water. The pump house still remains under a huge deposit of sand accumulated there. The waterline network too has got clogged with huge deposits of silt and sand and KWA is yet to restore the drinking water supply in Pampa. Similarly, the sewer line network at Pampa too has been clogged with silt.
The unprecedented flood has also left huge deposits of sand on the riverbed and on the either banks. The sand deposit on the left bank of the Pampa is about 10 metres thick. The cellar floor of the Maramath Complex at Pampa and the first floor of the Government Hospital building have been filled with sand. All civil work at Sabarimala, including the work on the water tank with a capacity to store 60 lakh litres at the Sannidhanam, that on the ‘Bhandaarom’ (hundi), the Annadana Mandapam (dining hall) and the Darshan Complex had got disrupted owing to difficulty in transporting material.
Several environmentalists attribute the present situation at Pampa to the unscientific construction practices adopted by the Travancore Devaswom Board. Based on a decision by the High Power Committee decision to beautify the Pampa Manalpuram, granite slabs had been paved up to the trekking path and later extended up to the Sannidhanam, but the floodwaters have washed away all the pavers from the river banks. An expert evaluation of the damages at the Pampa base camp is still awaited. The State Cabinet has decided to entrust coordination of the reconstruction at Sabarimala to the Tata Trust, but experience of the past fortnight probably shows that a repeat of the mistakes would leave the Pampa and the environs of Sabarimala as vulnerable as it was just a few days ago to another massive calamity.