INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
southern state faced since late July this year
The stain of death and devastation wrought by the flood will take longer than a season to wash away
NASA's images show the stark difference between the state before the flood and after the natural calamity stuck.The Operational Land Imager
(OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite acquired the left image on February 6, 2018, before the flood
The Multispectral Instrument on the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2 satellite acquired the right image on August 22, 2018, after flood
water had inundated the area
The images are false-colour, which makes flood water appear dark blue
Vegetation is bright green.NASA also released an image of the amount of total rainfall on the country and south-east Asia and said Kerala's
August rain played a part massive flooding, although it was worsened when water was released from several full dams
Instead of gradually releasing water during drier times, authorities were forced to open 80 dams in the region, including the Idukki Dam,
which is one of the largest arch dams in Asia
Thirty-five of those dams were opened for the first time."The dam releases came way too late, and it coincided with the heavy rain that was
occurring," said Sujay Kumar, research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.People are in despair in the state which has rendered
over 400 dead and a million homeless
The people have taken shelter in relief camps for now.Houses in low-lying areas are still submerged, roads are waterlogged and the sewage
from drains have washed into channels that are too slow-moving to effectively flush out the effluent.
