Rain stops in Uttarakhand, nightmare continues

It has been nearly three days since heavy rains wreaked havoc in the hill state, but even on Thursday, the NDMA could not give a time-frame within which those stranded could be rescued. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jun 21, 2013, 18:37:29 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The rains have stopped, but for the 50,000 plus people stranded in the upper reaches of Uttarakhand the nightmare continues.

It has been nearly three days since heavy rains wreaked havoc in the hill state, but even on Thursday India's top disaster management agency, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), could not give a time-frame within which those stranded could be rescued.

"Bad weather coupled with logistical constraints are hampering rescue work. There are huge landslides happening. We are trying our best," said NDMA vice-chairman MS Reddy.

Around 50 major landslides have been reported in just four roads in the last two days.

"Only 100 people have been air-lifted from Badrinath so far," said Dharmender Pandey, a Delhi government official who has been stranded at the shrine since Saturday. "There are 10,000 people here and there does not seem to be any way of getting out of this place".

An NDMA official, who did not want to be named, admitted that they were functioning under difficult conditions.

1,000 feared dead

"The makeshift helipads had to be built after the June 16 tragedy. Not more than one helicopter can land at a time. The local public health centers are ill-equipped to handle so many pilgrims. In fact, the number of people visiting the char dhams is much more than what the administration can handle," he said.

Despite repeated reminders after the flash floods of 2011 and 2012 and large parts of the state being earthquake prone, Uttarakhand has failed to get its act together unlike 16 other states that have constituted their own state disaster response forces.

"We have been telling states to train disaster management volunteers at the village level," said Shivaji Singh, senior consultant with the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF).

The NDMA did not get any land from the state government to set up a training centre which meant that NDRF personnel had to be rushed from Ghaziabad on June 16.

They could reach Kedarnath and Rudraprayag only on Wednesday. That apart, Uttarakhand does not have a public alert system for flash floods and cloudbursts unlike Himachal Pradesh.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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