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- Topics
- Feature
- Opportunities & Events
- Data
- Hindi Portal
Horrifying images like the one below, where a two-storey house topples like a child's toy, are commonplace in the Garhwal region of Uttarakhand. This year, the mayhem due to a cloudburst claimed 31 lives and disrupted hundreds more. This article examines the phenomenon of frequent monsoonal damage in this mountain state, probable reasons, and suggests possible mitigation measures.
Chief Minister Bahuguna flags off a relief truck bound for Uttarkashi (Photo courtesy: The Tribune)
However, the region needs aid beyond post-event compensation. With such monsoon-related calamities becoming a regular event in the region, an examination of the intensifying factors is required.
Relocation of villages: The Hindustan Times reports that 233 villages located in fragile areas are disaster-prone of which Records suggest 233 villages located in fragile areas are disaster-prone, of which 85 villages need immediate relocation. The government cites a lack of necessary funds as the main impediment to this relocation.
Search-and-rescue training: In order to minimize loss of life during the crucial hours immediately following a disaster, the government has initiated search-and-rescue trainings among community and government workers. ASHA workers, ANMs, and youth are trained in the basics of this important skill and provided with the necessary equipment. So far, 4223 members of the community have been trained.
Construction guidelines: The issue of relocation brings up the more pertinent (and more difficult to implement) issue of proper location in the first place. As a very simple instance, the video at the beginning of this post is certainly tragic- but is this unexpected? Building a two-storey concrete structure at the very edge of a fragile and shifting slope has predictable consequences.
This is a fact known to every child that has ever built a sand-castle, why is it so difficult for the state and its residents to recognize this fact? Increasing urbanization, a paucity of land, aspirational building, and the perversity of human nature which leads us all to believe that disasters happen to other people all contribute to precariously perched houses and shops.
Multi-storey buildings on the banks of a river are vulnerable to collapse in the Himalayas (Photo courtesy: Amar Ujala)
However, this is less excusable when it comes to the construction of infrastructure. Most landslides occur along roads, where the already weak rock layers are weakened and exposed by cutting. In 2000, the Indian Space Research Organisation along with various other institutions like the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Central Building Research Institute, Indian Institute of Technology and USAC among others have prepared a map which showed the risk areas in the State. This map is unfortunately not being consulted at the time of road construction, resulting in repeated damage to infrastructure and resultant loss of life and property.