Sunday is usually a day of fun and frolic. It’s a day of rest and when families unite and bond. However, this Sunday turned into a tragedy for countless families in Kerala’s Malappuram after a boat sank, killing 22 people on board.

On Sunday evening around 7.30 pm, a double-decker tourist boat near the Thoovaltheeram beach overturned and capsized, killing 22 people, including seven children and eight others undergoing treatment at various hospitals. Officials from the National Disaster Response Force and the Coast Guard are at the accident site searching for other survivors in the water.

The state government has declared an official mourning on Monday for the victims, and cancelled all official functions for the day. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan also visited the affected in the hospital and condoled with the families who lost their loved ones.

However, this isn’t the first time that Kerala has witnessed a boating tragedy. We take a closer look at past instances and what went wrong in this recent disaster.

Sunday gone wrong

On Sunday, the double-decker tourist boat set out sailing around 7.30 pm, the last trip of the day, when it capsized, leading to the deaths of 22 people on board. According to eyewitnesses and people on board, there were more than 40 people on the boat at the time of the tragedy – way more than the capacity of the vessel.

Moreover, according to a report published by Asia News, the tourist boat was originally a fishing boat that had been modified into a boatyard. However, officials are still trying to ascertain how the modified boat received a tourist licence. The police have registered a case against the boat owner, identified as P Nasar, for culpable homicide and are looking for him after he went missing.

Initial investigations also reveal that people on the boat were not given life-jackets, a mandate on such trips. There was also no safety certificate granted to the boat.

Rafeeque, one of the passengers who were rescued, was quoted as telling Indian Express that there were no lifejackets and no other safety features on the ship. Moreover, the rescue was delayed as there was no boat in the vicinity.

Initially, it was the locals and the fishermen of the area that began search operations and it was much later that the state authorities and a team of NDRF arrived at the spot. The rescue operations were hampered by the lack of lights and narrow roads to the spot, delaying the movement of the rescued to nearby hospitals.

After the incident, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted his condolences over the incident and announced an ex-gratia of Rs two lakh to the kin of the deceased.

Interestingly, Dr Muralee Thummarukudy, an international expert in disaster response, had predicted deaths of people in a houseboat accident just 10 days before the tragedy. In a Facebook post, he had issued a warning about the houseboat industry in Kerala and said that this extended to the tourism boats.

He added that safety briefings on board, such as vital information about potential problems and offering solutions during a journey, would be helpful. “Won’t there be more professionalism in the sector if tourism boat owners and government machinery worked in tandem,” he was quoted as saying.

Past boating tragedies

Sunday’s disaster is yet another incident that has occurred in Kerala’s waters. Over the past two decades, the state has witnessed several tragic boat accidents that have claimed the lives of many.

Before Sunday, the most recent boating accident had taken place in 2013 when four tourists from Tamil Nadu died after a house-boat carrying tourists overturned in the backwaters at Alappuzha.

Prior to that, in September of 2009 at least 45 tourists were killed in one of the worst tragedies in Kerala when a boat carrying tourists sank at the famous Periyar Thekkady lake.

A similar boating accident also claimed the lives of 14 children and three teachers in 2007 when a boat sank in a reservoir near Thattekkad bird sanctuary in Ernakulam district.

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One of the oldest boating accidents in Kerala dates back to 1924. In this unfortunate incident, 24 passengers, including the state’s most revered poet Mahakavi Kumaran Asan, died when a boat from Kollam to Kottayam sank at Palana.

Reasons for boating accidents

One of the primary reasons for these accidents reoccurring in Kerala is the quality of ships that are used. Most of the ferries in the water are unregistered as well as very old and rickety.

As seen in Sunday’s instance, overcrowding is another reason why such tragedies take place. Passengers and boat operators disregard safety considerations and travel in overloaded vessels leading to mishaps. There’s also the human factor involved. In many cases, the boat operators are poor and illiterate. There is no formal training in vessel operations. They are not aware of the safety procedures that need to be followed in case of emergency situations. In some cases, the passenger’s excitement, panic situations, lack of awareness.

Take the Thekkady boat disaster as an example of this: On 30 September 2009, a double-decker passenger boat sank in Lake Thekkady in Kerala, killing 45 tourists. Reports had stated that the accident occurred when a large number of passengers rushed to one side of the boat to see a herd of bison which emerged from the forest.

With inputs from agencies

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