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03-08-2024
Bureau Report + Agencies
NEW DELHI: Emergency workers rescued nearly 1,000 people who were stranded in different parts of the Himalayas following torrential rainfall in northern India, which caused widespread damage and left at least 12 people dead, officials said on Thursday.
The capital Delhi received intense rainfall late on Wednesday, totaling 147 mm (5.8 inches) in eastern parts of the city and its suburbs, the India Meteorological Department said. At least seven people died in Delhi, according to local media.
Three people died and parts of two bridges washed away after a cloudburst – a massive amount of rain in a brief period – in Uttarakhand state, officials said, and bad weather was hampering communications in the hilly terrain.
Rescue workers saved over 1,000 people who were stranded in different locations on the Kedarnath route – a trek to a Hindu pilgrimage site and a patch of the national highway was washed out, district official Saurabh Gaharwar said by phone.
Uttarakhand, which is prone to flash floods and landslides, was ravaged by record rainfall in 2013, and nearly 6,000 Hindu devotees on pilgrimages went missing.
In neighbouring Himachal Pradesh state, two people died and nearly 50 were missing after flooding caused by rains, authorities said.
Photos shared by the state chief minister showed rescue workers crossing streams by rope, as muddy water gushed through rocks between hills.
“The situation is quite bad there and we are trying to pull out people, dead bodies (if any) from the debris,” Jyoti Rana, a district official in the capital Shimla, told Reuters.
Some climate experts have attributed the extreme rainfall, flash floods and deadly landslides seen in the mountains of India, Pakistan and Nepal over the past few years to climate change.
Earlier this week, landslides swept through tea estates and villages in southern India’s Kerala state, killing at least 178 people after unexpectedly heavy rain.
In Delhi, water leaked from the glass dome of a newly constructed parliament building, opposition leader Akhilesh Yadav said. The leak was later repaired.
Delhi has experienced a series of extreme weather events in the past few months, from scorching temperatures to floods and rainfall that caused a roof collapse at the city’s airport.
Meanwhile, Landslides swept through tea estates and villages in southern India’s Kerala on Tuesday, killing at least 106 people while they slept as unexpected heavy rain collapsed hillsides and triggered torrents of mud, water and tumbling boulders.
The hillsides gave way after midnight following torrential rainfall on Monday in the Wayanad district of Kerala, a state known as one of India’s most popular tourist destinations. Most of the victims were tea estate workers and their families who lived in small houses or makeshift shelters.
Television images showed rescue workers scrambling through uprooted trees and flattened tin structures as boulders lay strewn across the hillsides and muddy water gushed through. Rescuers were being pulled across a stream, carrying stretchers and other equipment to rescue people. At least 106 people were killed in the landslides, 128 injured and dozens unaccounted for, state authorities said. Local Asianet TV put the death toll higher at 119.
Tuesday’s landslides are the worst disaster in the state since 2018 when heavy floods killed almost 400 people. “There are still people who are trapped under the ground and those who have been swept away,” Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told reporters. “The rescue operation will continue with all possible strength and means.”
