The State government is fully prepared to tackle the crisis triggered by the heavy rainfall in the State, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said here on Thursday night. He urged the people in the affected districts to cooperate with the evacuation.
Briefing the media after holding a review at the State Emergency Operations Centre (SEOC), he said that priority was being given to saving lives. There was no cause for undue concern at the moment, but the State government was constantly monitoring the situation, he said.
Learning from the 2018 experience, the government was able to mobilise rescue and relief units quickly. At present, 13,000 people had been evacuated to relief camps in various districts, he said.
Most importantly, people in landslip and flood-prone areas should not hesitate to move to camps. ''Majority have cooperated with the task of evacuation. But a few people are still hesitant. We have last year's experience before us,'' he said. Almost all the districts experienced heavy rainfall.
At Meppadi in Wayanad, a portion of a hillside had collapsed, triggering fears that several people had gone missing, he said. The full extent of the damage was yet to be ascertained, the Chief Minister said. ''The IAF will despatch its helicopters to the area once the rain lets up,'' he said.
Flight operations
Flight operations at the international airport in Kochi were suspended on Thursday for four hours till midnight as a precautionary measure in view of the heavy rain lashing the region, an official said.
Flights coming to the airport had been diverted, a spokesman of Cochin International Airport Ltd (CIAL) said without elaborating.
The airport operations were suspended till midnight as a precautionary measure, he told reporters.
The operations were suspended as there was a rise in water level in the Periyar river and a canal adjacent to the airport.
The airport was rendered non-functional for a fortnight in August 2018 due to inundation. It had suffered damage to infrastructure, including a 2.6-km-long wall that collapsed after the Periyar overflowed. The estimated loss was then put between ₹220 and ₹250 crore.
(With inputs from PTI)