Relentless downpours and howling winds hampered Wednesday’s search for survivors of landslides that struck Indian tea plantations and killed at least 160 people, most believed to be labourers and their families.

Days of torrential monsoon rains have battered the southern coastal state of Kerala, with blocked roads into the Wayanad district disaster area complicating relief efforts.

Heavy rain in Kerala, one of India’s most attractive tourist destinations, led to the landslides early on Tuesday, sending torrents of mud, water and tumbling boulders downhill and burying or sweeping people away to their deaths as they slept.

Senior police officer M.R. Ajith Kumar told AFP that around 500 people had been rescued since successive landslides struck before dawn on Tuesday.

“So far we have got more than 150 bodies,” he said. “Still large areas are to be explored and searched to find out whether live people are there or not.”

The local Asianet news TV channel put the death toll at 177.

It was the worst disaster in the state since deadly floods in 2018. Experts said the area had been receiving heavy rain in the last two weeks which had softened the soil and that extremely heavy rainfall on Monday triggered the landslides.

The only bridge connecting the worst-hit villages of Chooralmala and Mundakkai was washed away, forcing rescue teams to carry bodies on stretchers out of the disaster zone using a makeshift zipline erected over raging flood waters.

Several people who managed to flee the initial impact of the landslides found themselves caught in a nearby river that had burst its banks, volunteer rescuer Arun Dev told AFP at a hospital treating survivors.

“Those who escaped were swept away along with houses, temples and schools,” he said.

Near the site where the bridge was washed away, a land excavator was slowly removing trees and boulders from a mound of debris. Rescue workers in raincoats were making their way carefully through slush and rocks, under steady rain.

“We are quite sure there are multiple bodies here,” said Hamsa T A, a fire and rescue worker, pointing to the debris. “There were many houses here, people living inside have been missing.”

The landslides were mostly on the upper slopes of hills which then cascaded to the valley below, M R Ajith Kumar, a top state police officer, told Reuters.

“Focus right now is to search the entire uphill area for stranded people and recover as many bodies (as possible),” he said.

Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, who until recently represented Wayanad in parliament, said he had been unable to go through with a planned visit to the disaster.

“Due to incessant rains and adverse weather conditions we have been informed by authorities that we will not be able to land,” he said in a post on social media platform X.

“Our thoughts are with the people of Wayanad at this difficult time,” he added.

Warming Arabian Sea

Nearly 350 of the 400 registered houses in the affected region have been damaged, Asianet TV reported, citing district officials.

After a day of extremely heavy rainfall that hampered rescue operations, the weather department expects some respite on Wednesday, although the area is likely to receive rain through the day.

The Indian Navy said its disaster relief team had reached the area on Tuesday night and search and rescue helicopters were deployed early on Wednesday but “adverse weather conditions due to incessant rains” posed challenges.

India has witnessed extreme weather conditions in recent years, from torrential rain and floods to droughts and cyclones, blamed by some experts on climate change.

The region hit by the landslide was forecast to get 204 millimetres of rainfall but ended up getting 572mm over a period of 48 hours, Kerala’s chief minister said on Tuesday.

“The Arabian Sea is warming at a higher rate compared to other regions and sending more evaporation into the atmosphere, making the region a hotspot for deep convective clouds,” said S Abhilash, head of the Advanced Centre for Atmospheric Radar Research at Kerala’s Cochin University of Science and Technology.

“Deep developed clouds in the southeast Arabian Sea region were carried by winds towards land and produced this havoc,” he told Reuters.