Preliminary analysis of the July 30, 2024, Wayanad landslide disaster in India: Causes and impacts
Qinxia Wang, Chong Xu, Junxue Ma, Yuandong Huang, Shuhui Zhang, Huiran Gao
Abstract
In recent years, with the increasingly pronounced trend of global climate warming, extreme weather events have become more frequent and intense, leading to a significant rise in the occurrence of natural disasters. Landslides, as a common and highly destructive type of geological hazard, are often extremely damaging when triggered by short-duration intense rainfall. At 2:00 a.m. on July 30, 2024, a large-scale landslide occurred in the Wayanad district of Kerala, India, induced by continuous heavy rainfall. This landslide disaster resulted in at least 373 deaths, over 200 injuries, and 218 people reported missing, making it the most devastating disaster in Kerala's history in terms of both casualties and damage, and causing severe human and economic losses. This study utilizes multi-source data and remote sensing imagery to review the evolution of the disaster event in detail and conducts a preliminary analysis of the landslide's causes based on Disaster System Theory. The results indicate that this large-scale landslide was a reactivation of a pre-existing failure. While extreme tropical rainfall was the primary triggering factor, the geological setting and anthropogenic activities further intensified the disaster's occurrence and impacts. Specifically, the synergistic coupling among the disaster-breeding environment (unstable geological structures and anthropogenic disturbances), disaster-inducing factors (intensified rainfall under climate change), and vulnerability of exposed elements (high population density, insufficient emergency response, and generally high societal risk) collectively led to the disaster. Despite active emergency response efforts following the event, the management process still revealed several shortcomings, including inaccurate early warnings, inadequate in-disaster coordination, and insufficient post-disaster recovery. This study summarizes the experience and lessons from India's response to the rainfall-induced landslide, and, in combination with China's context, proposes targeted countermeasures, aiming to provide scientific evidence and practical guidance for improving emergency management and disaster risk reduction capacities in China and other countries facing similar hazards.