Tremors accompanied by a loud sound triggered panic in several villages in Wayanad on Friday morning, just 11 days after the deadliest landslides in the district.

The authorities later clarified that it was a post-landslide activity and nothing to be worried about. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to visit Wayanad on Saturday to take stock of the damages caused by the landslides.

The sound that the residents described as “scary” was heard twice within a minute around 10am even in parts of neighbouring Kozhikode, Malappuram and Palakkad districts, apart from the landslide-hit Mundakkai and Chooralmala where relief workers said they too felt it.

While no one was hurt, several villagers as far as 20km from the landslide-affected sites said their window panes developed cracks. Many said they felt the ground moving and lost their balance for a few moments. Residents of villages 20km away from Mundakkai and Chooralmala trooped out of their homes fearing another disaster.

The district administration declared a holiday for schools in the area and sent students back home. Elected representatives, revenue officials and disaster management teams visited the villages to assess the situation.

Although the National Seismological Centre later clarified that it was a post-landslide activity, many residents refused to return to their homes fearing a repeat of the landslides that had swept away the neighbouring villages and left over 400 dead and 130 missing.

Director of the National Centre for Seismology, O.P. Mishra, told a news channel that the tremors were unrelated to any earthquake. “The sound and tremors were caused by the shifting of the land mass on the surface. But it is not an earthquake,”
he said.

“The land mass gets weakened after landslides. So the land mass is shifting. That creates a rumbling sound. There is nothing to worry about because there is no record of earthquakes in that zone till today,” he said.

However, the residents had by then rushed out of their homes fearing a seismic activity or landslide. Members of a fire and rescue team from Ernakulam who were searching for bodies in Mundakkai told reporters that they felt the tremors and heard the sound. They were asked to immediately vacate the area and return to the base camp.

Wayanad district collector D.R. Meghashree said the authorities started shifting the residents to relief camps soon after the incident and would assess the situation before allowing them to return.