The ‘great flood of 1924’, which lasted three weeks and left Periyar in spate for several days, is still etched in the collective memory of Kerala. The waters had risen to such a level that Munnar town was completely flooded, causing huge damage to life and property. The Kundala Valley Light Railway set up by the Britishers suffered such massive damage that it had to be abandoned.
A huge hill that used to be known by the name Karinthiri was completely washed away and along with it went the road to Munnar, necessitating the construction of the present road with a new alignment touching Mannankandam (Adimali) and Pallivasal. The new road was inaugurated by Regent Queen Sethulakshmi Bai on March 31, 1931. Ranikallu , a memorial stone raised at Neriyamangalam to mark the occasion, is still around as a reminder of the huge loss and the inspiring reconstruction effort.
History of Hundred Years of Planting an in-house publication of Tata-Finlay Ltd has vivid description of the Munnar flood and the damage it had caused. But it was not just Munnar region, but vast areas of the former Travancore and Kochi princely States and some areas of Malabar region were submerged in the waters. Over a 1,000 lives were lost and there was extensive loss of crops and cattle downstream up to the Kochi coast.
Munnar received 485 mm rainfall and there was extensive loss of crops and cattle. Thonnoottombathile vellappokkam thus became a kind of marker in the State’s cultural history.
Earlier, the floods in 1790 are said to have thwarted Tipu Sultan’s attempts to overrun Travancore. And, later, in 1957, yet another flood had caused massive damages. Yet, it was in 1924 that the fury of the Periyar brought down everything in its path and left large parts of Travancore and Kochi under a veil of gloom and misery.
Breach in the Mullaperiyar dam, barely 29 years after its construction, has been cited by some as the main reason for the sudden onrush of water in 1924 and the resultant heavy damages, but authoritative accounts are not too many to support this position.
Illegal constructions
The terrain of Idukki has undergone unbelievable transformation during the past nearly a century after Thonnoottombathile vellappokkam , especially during the past few decades, with large-scale squatting and encroachments and mushrooming of buildings, many of them constructed illegally. According to Mariyapuram grama panchayat president Sali Jolly, encroachment on the riverbanks and the riverbed has been so rampant that the river has turned into a narrow ribbon.
The video footage of the flood waters hitting the Cheruthoni bridge and pulling down palms in land jutting almost halfway into the river for a bus stand is a painful example of how the natural course of the river has been encroached upon even in the higher reaches.
“There is no Periyar downstream. All that you see in many places are coconut palms and other crops. There are even stretches of the riverbed that have been leased out,” says Ms. Jolly.
The shutters of the Cheruthoni dam have been opened after a gap of 26 years. During the intervening period, the river has shrunk drastically, yielding place and space to cultivation and construction activities.
Reclaiming its path
When the dam shutters were opened, the river could not but reclaim that it had lost over the years and it did so in full force, as can be seen by anyone who looks at the images of the river in full flow over the past one week. Several poorly constructed structures have come crumbling and hundreds have been shifted to relief camps. Now that the rains have subsided, the time has come for picking up the pieces.
Being a place located close to the Cheruthoni dam, there are strong curbs on construction activities in Cheruthoni. However, building activities have been going on unhindered in the area.
A sports stadium has been constructed almost on the riverbed, close to the DTPC park under the archdam, using MLA Local Area Development Fund.
The fury of the Periyar may, thus, have a message for all those who care for the sustainability of the fragile land mass in a district that is home to the largest number of dams in the State.
