Key points
- Floods sweeping away homes, roads and a local market in Uttarakhand
- Rescuers searching for dozens, including 11 Indian army soldiers
- Rescue efforts hampered by heavy rain: Officials
ISLAMABAD: Rescuers were scouring a devastated Himalayan village in northern India to find dozens of missing people, a day after flash floods killed at least four people and left many others trapped under debris, officials said Wednesday.
AP reported that flood waters triggered by intense rains gushed down the narrow mountains Tuesday into Dharali, a mountain village in Uttarakhand state, sweeping away homes, roads and a local market.
Rescuers were searching for dozens, including at least 11 Indian army soldiers, who are believed to be trapped under the rubble, AP reported. Authorities said rescue workers had recovered four bodies by Wednesday.
Search underway
“The search for others is still underway,” said Dilip Singh, a disaster management official. Singh said adverse weather conditions, damaged roads and rugged terrain were hampering rescue efforts.
An Indian army camp in Harsil, some seven kilometres (4.3 miles) from the flooded village of Dharali, was also hit by flash floods and 11 army personnel were missing, AP cited Col. Harshvardhan as saying.
“The conditions are extremely challenging,” said Lt Col Manish Srivastava, a defense spokesperson.
The flooding in northern India is the latest in a series of disasters that have battered the Himalayan mountains in the last few months.
Flash floods and landslides
Sudden, intense downpours over small areas known as cloudbursts are increasingly common in Uttarakhand, a Himalayan region prone to flash floods and landslides during the monsoon season, AP reported.
Cloudbursts have the potential to wreak havoc by causing intense flooding and landslides, impacting thousands of people in the mountainous regions.
Similar incidents were recorded in Dharali in 1864, 2013 and 2014. More than 6,000 people died and 4,500 villages were affected when a similar cloudburst devastated Uttarakhand state in 2013.
“A ticking time bomb”
“This village sits on a ticking time bomb,” said geologist SP Sati. “It is in a highly fragile zone.”
Uttarakhand has witnessed a growing number of extreme weather events in recent years.
Lokendra Bisht, a local lawmaker who runs a homestay in the area, said people ran for their lives, but the flood waters came so fast that “there was nothing anyone could do.”
“The whole of Dharali village was wiped out,” AP cited him as saying.
