The team deployed at Dehradun established contact with FMRs and Patwaris in these affected Districts and the FMRs prepared lists of people who were stranded in their region. The list had details about the place they were stranded in, the contact person they wanted to inform their whereabouts, a message they wished to convey, phone number etc. Around 50 such messages were delivered about these stranded people to their families that were waiting for information about their loved ones.
A tracing request from Tamil Nadu was received regarding a group of pilgrims, their location was found out and medical assistance was organised for them. A meeting was held in state branch where around 30 volunteers participated who committed their time for relief operation activities.
Relief materials in the form of Family tents to accomodate upto 8 persons each , family packs including kitchen sets, clothings, buckets etc.
So every night, they trek two kilometres to higher ground. For the past two years, the villagers said they have noticed the fissures getting bigger on the land above their village. Various appeals to the government to relocate the village have been ignored so far.
Deforestation So why is Uttarkhand more threatened by landslides than before? Simply put: deforestation. Deforestation, plus the heavy monsoon rainfall of the last few years has resulted in a landscape permanently at risk of landslides.
Deforestation is a result of massive development in the last few years in Uttarakhand, including development in construction projects to cater for tourist demands, mining and hydro electric projects. Huge areas of forest have been cleared for mining, adding to the problems. So early, heavy rainfall that combined with melting ice and snow, raced unhindered by forest or natural obstacles, down the mountain and hill sides of Uttarakhand that had, over recent years, been made unstable by deforestation.
Over Development Mining, including river bed mining, road building, tunnelling and hydro-power projects have also been accused of destroying the eco-balance in Uttarakhand. Mining companies — in particular river bed mining, where stones and sand are mined for construction — have not adhered to laws and guidelines and their actions have damaged riverbanks, increasing the width of riverbeds and even changing the course of rivers.
There are 45 hydro power projects with a total capacity of 3, MW in operation in Uttarakhand. Many more projects are being built or have been proposed. Various projects have involved the re-routing of rivers through tunnels cut through the mountain, leaving long stretches of rivers dry and without allowing the rivers time and space to regenerate.
Dam construction involves blasting, excavation, debris dumping, movement of heavy machinery, diversion of forests and rivers. The normal routes of the flood waters were blocked as a result of development projects. Tourism Tourism certainly played a role in the disaster — there were simply too many people in the wrong place at the wrong time. The numbers of visitors killed or stranded turned the Uttarakhand floods into a catastrophe on a massive scale.
But large scale tourism also places untold pressure on infrastructure, and also has resulted in unfettered development of roads, houses, hotels and shops built up in flood plains and ecologically fragile areas. Some also argue that such large scale tourism has resulted in huge amounts of waste chiefly plastic water bottles clogging up rivers and green open spaces. Tourism to the area, mostly in the form of pilgrimages to the many holy sites in the state, has risen dramatically over the last few years.
In , for example, This more than doubles the population of Uttarakhand which normally has a population of around 14 million. Road, he says, is a major destabilising factor for a mountain and it is a new phenomenon for the Himalaya.
Pandit, who is in Uttarakhand for a research project, recounts an observation. Withing seven to eight minutes, buses crossed," he says. Data with the Uttarakhand State Transport Department confirms this.
In , 83,odd vehicles were registered in the state. The figure rose to nearly , in Out of this, proportion of cars, jeeps and taxis, which are the most preferred means of transport for tourists landing in the state, increased the most. In , 4, such vehicles were registered, which jumped to 40, in It is an established fact that there is a straight co-relation between tourism increase and higher incidence of landslides.
Several roads were blocked as heavy rains threw life out of gear in Uttarakhand on Monday. Three people died in Lansdowne in Pauri Garhwal district after a shanty collapsed under heavy muck brought in by the rains on Monday morning. A year-old woman died in a similar incident in the Champawat district. In the hilly Pithoragarh district, at least 10 roads, including three major arteries—Tanakpur to Pithoragarh, Jauljibi to Munsiyari and Tawaghat to Darma—were blocked due to landslides on Monday.
Share Via. By Ankur Sharma and Kalyan Das. Get our Daily News Capsule Subscribe. Thank you for subscribing to our Daily News Capsule newsletter.
0コメント