At least 12 people were feared killed in cloudburst-triggered flash floods and landslides on the outskirts of Chamoli town on Thursday morning, the latest in a series of monsoon disasters in Uttarakhand blamed on climate change and unregulated development.
“We have reports of more than 10 people missing from Chamoli. Some 22 houses were destroyed. We have rescued 200 villagers,” state disaster management secretary Vinod Kumar Suman said.
Speaking off the record, government officials said at least 12 people had drowned or lay buried under the debris in the affected area — Kuntari Lagafali in Nandanagar and its neighbourhood.
The Uttarakhand government doesn’t officially acknowledge deaths until the bodies have been found, a policy that can deprive families of the untraced dead of compensation and make property-related paperwork difficult.
“Ten people from Kuntari and two from (neighbouring) Dhurma have been missing for more than 12 hours and are feared dead,” a disaster management official said in Dehradun, asking not to be quoted.
Kuntari resident Surendra Singh Rawat said: “It was
still dark when the entire area was submerged. We could not see anything.”
He said a few villagers somehow made their way to a higher spot up a narrow pathway.
“At least 30 people are still stranded there because the approach road was later damaged. More than 10 people (from Kuntari) are dead. We could inform the disaster management department about the calamity only after 6am,” Rawat said.
He claimed the floods and landslides also ravaged Sera village near Dhurma.
“Half of Sera was destroyed in a cloudburst on July 8 and the rest was finished last night,” he said.
Increasing cloudbursts, blamed on climate change, have ravaged Uttarakhand this monsoon season, causing widespread flash floods and landslides that local people and scientists attribute to indiscriminate infrastructure projects in the geologically fragile mountains.
Some 15 people died in Dehradun district on Tuesday when a cloudburst set off flash floods at several places. Over two dozen houses and hotels, and several bridges and roads were swept away in areas surrounding the city of Dehradun.
Over 200 tourists and local people are believed to have been killed in Dharali, Uttarkashi, on August 5 when flash floods destroyed an entire market area.
Rescuers could recover only six bodies and stopped the search after a week, with the rest of the dead suspected to be buried 10 to 20 metres under the earth, or washed away by the river.
Nine army personnel were killed in a flash flood
the same day in Harsil area
of Uttarkashi.
At least nine labourers died in the Silai Band area of Uttarkashi following a cloudburst on June 29. They had been working on a hotel project along the highway to Yamunotri on the Chardham pilgrimage route.
A flash flood at Tharali in Chamoli on August 23 killed six people and destroyed more than 30 houses. The roads damaged around the area are still under repair.