Nearly 200 metres of the Gap Road on the Kochi-Dhanushkodi National Highway in Munnar was destroyed on Wednesday night in a major landslip. Thirteen acres of a cardamom plantation also was wiped out in the incident.
Two buildings on a slope near the road at Kallan Guha were destroyed and another one was damaged in the landslip which occurred around 7.30 p.m.
Similar incidents had been reported in the area in the past two years after road-widening works were taken up there.
People living at Komalikkudy, Societykada, Kakkakada and Changanacherry Kada were shifted to safer areas. Devikulam Subcollector S. Premkrishnan, Devikulam MLA S. Rajendran, and tahsildar Niju Kurien visited the spot. The district administration had suspended traffic on the Gap Road on June 5 in view of the monsoon season.
Mr. Premkrishnan said an expert team from the National Institute of Technology, Calicut, (NIT-C), would inspect the site on June 30. The road-widening works would resume only after the study report, he added.
A report submitted in 2019 by the then Devikulam Subcollector Renu Raj had pointed out that unscientific road-widening works had caused regular landslides on the Gap Road. Based on the report, an NIT-C team had conducted a study and works were resumed.
In a landslip on October 8, 2019, two persons engaged in road-widening works were killed and two vehicles damaged. On July 28, 2019, another landslip on the Gap Road damaged roadside shops and vehicles parked there. Around 15 landslips were reported on the Gap Road stretch after the road-widening works were taken up.
