Uttarakhand Floods: a Disaster of Our Own Making?
Uttarakhand Floods: A Disaster of Our Own Making?
Even after two weeks of rescue operations uncertainty prevails over the number of casualties and people still stuck in what is described as the worst natural disaster that has ever struck the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand. The Chief Minister of the mountainous state, Vijay Bahuguna, says that the exact number of deaths in the calamity will never be known as estimates of the actual casualties vary from hundreds to several thousands. One senior official claims that thedeath toll could exceed 10,000. According to state officials, 3,000 people are still missing from the region. Most of the victims identified so far have been outsiders who were on the Char Dham Yatra pilgrimage to Uttarkhand’s shrines of Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri and Yamnotri, which takes place between May and November. This is one of the reasons that the tragedy in the tiny state has impacted the whole nation.
During peak season every year hordes of pilgrims come from across India and abroad to visit hilly pilgrimage centers accessible only by small roads, which believers travel with the help of mules. For Hindus, the journey to the four shrines carries a similar level of importance as Haj does for Muslims.
The inaccessibility of the terrain and breakdown in communication made it difficult to assess the enormity of the damage in the first few days after incessant rain started on June 16. Subsequent cloudbursts wiped out town after town and ravaged hundreds of villages.
Describing the magnitude of the problem, the CNN-IBN correspondent Karma Palijor, who has been reporting from the area for almost two weeks, told The Diplomat that “India has never seen this kind of tragedy. It’s worse than the tsunami (of 2004). The tsunami killed many, but it came and was gone. Here, the bigger challenge has come after the devastation with the rescue operation; to bring people stranded in the middle of nowhere to a
Even after two weeks of rescue operations uncertainty prevails over the number of casualties and people still stuck in what is described as the worst natural disaster that has ever struck the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand. The Chief Minister of the mountainous state, Vijay Bahuguna, says that the exact number of deaths in the calamity will never be known as estimates of the actual casualties vary from hundreds to several thousands. One senior official claims that thedeath toll could exceed 10,000. According to state officials, 3,000 people are still missing from the region. Most of the victims identified so far have been outsiders who were on the Char Dham Yatra pilgrimage to Uttarkhand’s shrines of Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri and Yamnotri, which takes place between May and November. This is one of the reasons that the tragedy in the tiny state has impacted the whole nation.
During peak season every year hordes of pilgrims come from across India and abroad to visit hilly pilgrimage centers accessible only by small roads, which believers travel with the help of mules. For Hindus, the journey to the four shrines carries a similar level of importance as Haj does for Muslims.
The inaccessibility of the terrain and breakdown in communication made it difficult to assess the enormity of the damage in the first few days after incessant rain started on June 16. Subsequent cloudbursts wiped out town after town and ravaged hundreds of villages.
Describing the magnitude of the problem, the CNN-IBN correspondent Karma Palijor, who has been reporting from the area for almost two weeks, told The Diplomat that “India has never seen this kind of tragedy. It’s worse than the tsunami (of 2004). The tsunami killed many, but it came and was gone. Here, the bigger challenge has come after the devastation with the rescue operation; to bring people stranded in the middle of nowhere to a