
Kerala floods 2018 - merrinkurian
Massive destruction in unprecedented floods in Kerala creating havoc for more than a week
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merrinkurian
People blamed many factors for the extensive floods and resulting damage but
some natural calamities are simply unavoidable. The state received 2087.67 mm
of rains this season when the floods started whereas the normal is 1606 mm.
Rains haven’t stopped since then and all 35+ reservoirs had to open shutters
at the same time to contain the flow. This is the largest rainfall in almost a
century. The largest rainfall state ever received was in 1924 exceeding 3000
mm of rain which even washed away a mountain. So man made construction alone
is not the cause for the destruction. Comparitively the Uttarakhand floods of
2013 that killed about 5400 people was only from 500 mm of rain.
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.indiatoday.in/amp/india/sto...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.indiatoday.in/amp/india/story/why-
kerala-fears-repeat-of-1924-havoc-in-2018-rainfall-1315884-2018-08-16)

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merrinkurian
Rescue and relief efforts are largely powered by volunteers with various
government agencies. Social media is helping in a big way, however the
ephemeral nature of posts make the deluge of information unmanageable for
volunteers. Kerala is the most literate and have most of its working
population outside. With a population of 300 million and tech savvy relatives
and friends outside the state retweeting and sharing sos calls and relief
resources, volunteers are inundated with duplicate and sometimes heavily
outdated information. Scanning the feeds with content mostly as images and in
Malayalam language with contain images and content, data collection is a huge
challenge. Another challenge was identifying the location of victims. After
the road signs and two storied houses were almost under water even sharing
google map coordinates proved to be difficult to be useful. India does not
have a standardized address system. Landmarks were under water too. So were
mobile towers.

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merrinkurian
The state of Kerala known as Gods own country in India received 257% rainfall
this year, the heaviest in a century. $2.7 billion in damages estimated. More
than 300000 evacuated to relief camps and thousands are still stranded in
flooded areas. More red alerts issues throughout the state. Cochin airport the
4th largest in the country is closed for more than 10 days. Details
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/08/18/asia...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/08/18/asia/kerala-
floods/index.html)

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merrinkurian
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Kerala_floods](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Kerala_floods)

