The death toll in the landslide on the Mata Vaishno Devi pilgrimage route has gone up to 34, a day after disaster struck Ardhkunwari near the hilltop shrine in Jammu and Kashmir's Reasi district amid heavy rain. At least 18 people were injured.
An eyewitness described the terrifying moment, explaining he heard a loud noise, and everything happened within moments.
“It was like a loud thunderclap or a bomb blast from above. The shed collapsed at once. First, the upper shed fell, then the second one, with a gap of about three or four seconds,” Ramesh Singh, a palkiwalla (palanquin carrier), said.
The pilgrimage to the shrine was suspended when the mountainside gave way as stones, boulders and rocks came hurtling down around 3pm on Tuesday, catching pilgrims unawares.
The landslide hit a protection shed at a point about halfway along the 12-km trek from Katra town to the hilltop shrine.
“There were about 35–40 people (in the shed). There was a lot of water. Some pilgrims were above, some below. I was injured. I had three boys with me; they went back, and managed to pull out four people from there. But soil kept coming down from above,” he added.
Among those killed in the landslide were at least five children and eight women. At least four victims each were from Punjab, Rajasthan and Delhi, and three were from Uttar Pradesh.
{{/usCountry}}Among those killed in the landslide were at least five children and eight women. At least four victims each were from Punjab, Rajasthan and Delhi, and three were from Uttar Pradesh.
{{/usCountry}}There are two routes up to the shrine. While the yatra had been suspended on the Himkoti trek route since morning, it was going on on the older route till 1.30 pm when authorities decided to suspend it till further orders in view of the torrential rain.
‘Why pilgrims were not stopped?’: CM Abdullah
Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah has questioned why officials did not stop Vaishno Devi pilgrims when there was a warning of inclement weather.
"We will have to talk about it later. When we knew about the weather, should we not have taken certain steps to save those lives? The weather warning had come to us a few days ago," he told reporters in Jammu, according to PTI.
"Why were these people on the track? Why were they not stopped? Why were they not moved to a safe place?" the chief minister added.
In just a day, Jammu recorded 380 mm of rain, the highest rainfall ever recorded in the region in a 24-hour period since 1910, when the observatory was established. The last record was 270.4 mm recorded on September 25, 1988. This has also broken the record of 218.4 mm recorded on August 23, 1996.