A two-storeyed building painted pink was once Augustine’s home at Kochuthope. There was also a tiled front yard and sea just yards away that made it quite picturesque. “This was my home before the waves took it,” he says.
The house now remains in his memory and in a photograph that Augustine keeps along with another one on how the house looked after calamity struck.
The coastal hamlet of Valiyathura has many such stories of loss and they keep adding on every time monsoon strikes, turning seas choppy and urging waves to gulp houses close to the coast.
“Over the years, the waves have taken three rows of houses,” says Albert, 74, a Valiyathura local. Gesturing towards the row of houses that now stands closest to the sea he says, “That was once the fourth line.”
As the 2020 monsoon season approaches, local people are wary of what is in store. Against the threat of the marauding waves, debris of houses and makeshift seawalls destroyed in the past monsoons and cement sacks packed with sand form perhaps the only line of defence.
Their long-standing demand for a proper seawall—a permanent structure that can fend off the waves—remains unfulfilled. To the south of Valiyathura Pier, huge boulders have been stacked for a short distance but vast stretches remain undefended.
On May 22, the State government issued administrative sanction for carrying out three anti-sea erosion works at Valiyathura for ₹4 crore. All three involves “urgent construction of protection walls” along three stretches of this part of the coast. “The Chief Engineer (Irrigation and Administration) will implement (the work) on urgent disaster management work basis,” the order issued by B. Ashok, Secretary (Water Resources), reads.
But the residents do not feel the wall would get completed before the monsoon this year. “Boulders were stacked over a small distance last year. Then they told us that the trucks could not go further because the streets are narrow,” a resident said.
Families who lost their houses to the sea moved into government-built flats at Muttathara in 2018. But families from Valiyathura and Kochuthope who faced the brunt of coastal erosion in the past one year are languishing in two old warehouses close to the pier where they face privacy issues.
Social distancing also remains a challenge in such a scenario. The only visible concession to the COVID-19 situation is that cots are placed some distance from one another. “We want to move out of here. Both my husband and my son-in-law have health problems,” says Stella, an occupant. Her husband Edwin, 63, fell ill when out fishing in December.
Work is also hard to come by with the weather prompting the government to temporarily ban fishing. “During the rainy season, our men won’t be able to fish for three whole months. How will we live?” asks Cicily, an elderly occupant who sells fish to eke out a living.
