when the water rose: how Kerala communicated through the 2018 floods

The rain

The Post Disaster Needs Assessment for Kerala, prepared in October 2018 by the Government of Kerala with United Nations agencies and European partners, describes the scale. Between 1 June and 18 August, the state received rainfall 42 percent above normal. The heaviest spell came in the first twenty days of August. Excess water had to be released from 37 dams. Around 341 landslides were reported from ten districts, 143 of them in Idukki.

The report counts 433 lives lost between late May and late August, 5.4 million people affected and 1.4 million displaced. Close to 14 lakh people had to move into relief camps, many of them schools. Behind each of these numbers is a family, and this piece does not try to tell their stories. It looks at one narrower thing: how people in authority, and ordinary people, communicated while the water was rising.

Saying how serious it was

On 17 August, as the Associated Press reported, the Chief Minister's office posted a short message on Twitter: "Kerala state is facing its worst flood in 100 years." The same day Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told reporters that at least 324 people had died and more than 220,000 were in camps.

Those figures were later revised upward as more information came in. That is normal in a disaster, and it matters for how we read the record: early numbers are provisional, and honest officials say so.

A week later, on 24 August, Vijayan issued a public statement, reported by Business Today, that set out the damage as the government then understood it: hundreds of lives lost since the monsoon began, more than 26,000 homes damaged or destroyed, over 300 landslides, more than 4,000 relief camps housing nearly 14 lakh people, and a preliminary loss estimate of about Rs 20,000 crore. He thanked rescue teams, volunteers and fishermen, and asked for help from around the world, saying the state could not meet the cost alone.

The structure is worth noticing: what has happened, what we are doing, who we are thankful to, and what we need from you.

The fishermen

The assessment lists the national forces the state mobilised: fire and rescue services, National Disaster Response Force teams, Army columns, Navy and Coast Guard teams with boats and helicopters, Air Force helicopters and aircraft. Then it adds something unusual for an official document. The fishing community, it says, gave remarkable voluntary help. Nearly 669 boats went out with 4,537 fishermen, and they are estimated to have saved at least 65,000 lives.

Reuters reporting from Chengannur and Aluva, carried by the Christian Science Monitor, gives a sense of how. Fishermen and local boat owners often reached flooded areas before official teams. They knew the lanes and the currents. Some kept working after dark, with headlamps, when teams were stood down for safety. One fisherman in Malappuram knelt in the water so that women could step on his back into a boat, and the images spread widely online. A priest helped organise around 130 boats and 500 fishermen in Pathanamthitta and Alappuzha, with the government arranging transport for boats to where they were needed. The Chief Minister said the state would honour the boatmen, reimburse them and repair damaged boats.

A website built in a day, and WhatsApp control rooms

Communication networks faltered in many places. Into that gap came volunteers.

The News Minute reported on 16 August that the Kerala IT Mission had worked with the IEEE, the engineering professional body, to set up keralarescue.in. It was not for money. People in distress, or relatives elsewhere, could post what they needed: rescue, food, medicine, a doctor. Volunteers and district teams picked up the requests. Within about a day and a half of going live, the site had more than 8,000 registered volunteers. The Caravan later reported that eight IEEE volunteers built it in roughly a day.

The government's own assessment credits this directly. It says keralarescue.in and the use of WhatsApp by volunteer groups and government officials helped identify people who needed rescue, locate camps and their needs, and register volunteers, and that in many places WhatsApp groups functioned as virtual control rooms.

The Caravan describes the rest of the ecosystem: a Facebook page that pulled scattered rescue posts into one place, a civil servant with a large following who used his account to post relief needs and correct misinformation, a missed-call helpline run by volunteers, and volunteers stationed in district control rooms to pass messages from online groups to officials. It also notes a limit: some location details shared online were imprecise, and food drops sometimes missed houses.

Fighting rumours

Floods bring fear, and rumours travel quickly. BOOM, the Indian fact-checking site, documented several false alarms on 17 August. An audio clip claimed the Mullaperiyar dam had cracked and that several districts would be flooded within hours. A message said the electricity board would shut down every power station. A mobile number circulated as a Navy rescue helicopter helpline.

The responses were fast and specific. The Water Resources Department's secretary wrote to the state police chief calling the dam claim baseless, saying the dam had not cracked, and asking the cyber cell to trace the source. The electricity board explained that power had been cut in some areas for safety and would return as water receded. A Navy spokesperson told BOOM that rescue requests should go through the state disaster management authority, not private numbers. Kerala Police warned that people spreading panic would face legal action. The Caravan reports that newsrooms set up their own verification efforts.

What is disputed

The overall facts of the floods are well documented, but some numbers differ by source and by date. Death tolls rose as reports came in: 324 in mid-August, 372 in the Chief Minister's 24 August statement, 433 in the assessment covering late May to late August. Accounts of how many fishermen and boats took part also vary, from a figure of around 600 boats given by a minister quoted by Reuters to the assessment's 669 boats and 4,537 fishermen. Volunteer-platform numbers come mostly from the organisers themselves. We also could not confirm, from sources we could open, the often repeated claim that the Chief Minister held daily press briefings throughout the floods, so we have left it out.

The lesson for the rest of us

Most of us will never coordinate a flood response. But many of us lead people through smaller emergencies: a factory shutdown, a hospital ward short of staff on a bad night, a school dealing with a frightening rumour, a family when a parent is suddenly admitted to hospital.

Kerala's experience suggests a few habits.

Say what you know, and say it is provisional. Early numbers change. Say so, and update.

Say what you need, specifically. Not "please help" but boats, doctors, drivers, dry food. Keralarescue.in worked because requests were specific and visible.

Name the people helping. Public thanks to the fishermen, by the state, was itself a message about who belonged in the rescue.

Kill rumours fast, with facts, from the right source. The dam rumour was answered by the department that runs the dams, in writing.

Give one channel. The Navy's point about one official route for rescue requests is simple and vital.

"Here is what we know at six o'clock. These numbers will change, and I will update you at nine."

"We need three things tonight: drivers with large vehicles, dry food for two hundred people, and anyone with medical training."

"There is a message going round about the main gate being closed. It is not true. The gate is open, and this is the only number to call."

Sources

1. Government of Kerala, Kerala State Disaster Management Authority, United Nations agencies and European Union partners, Kerala Post Disaster Needs Assessment: Floods and Landslides, August 2018, October 2018 (PDF, UN Women library). wrd.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/2023-09/PDNA_Kerala_India.pdf
2. Associated Press via PBS NewsHour, People plucked from rooftops as Indian floods kill 324, 17 August 2018. www.pbs.org/newshour/world/people-plucked-from-rooftops-as-indian-floods-kill-324
3. Business Today, Kerala is facing its biggest calamity in 100 years; stand by us in these testing times, says Pinarayi Vijayan, 24 August 2018. www.businesstoday.in/amp/latest/economy-politics/story/kerala-biggest-calamity-in-100-years-stand-by-us-pinarayi-vijayan-109092-2018-08-24
4. Jose Devasia and Sudarshan Varadhan, Reuters, Unsung heroes: fishermen rescue thousands in Kerala floods, via Christian Science Monitor, 22 August 2018. www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2018/0822/Unsung-heroes-fishermen-rescue-thousands-in-Kerala-floods
5. The News Minute, Want to help Kerala's flood victims? Check out Keralarescue.in, 16 August 2018. www.thenewsminute.com/kerala/want-help-keralas-flood-victims-check-out-keralarescuein-86663
6. Aathira Konikkara, How social media was vital to rescue efforts during the Kerala floods, The Caravan, 6 October 2018. caravanmagazine.in/vantage/how-social-media-was-vital-to-rescue-efforts-during-the-kerala-floods
7. BOOM, Kerala floods: fake news about dam burst, no power create panic, 17 August 2018. www.boomlive.in/amp/kerala-floods-fake-news-about-dam-burst-no-power-create-panic

Published by The Full Stop, the journal of Brightside English, in the Landmark Moments series. Every factual claim links to a source below; where accounts or findings are disputed, we say so. Sources checked on 26 Oct 2026. Reviewed by a Brightside senior coach. Corrections: see our editorial standard.