Natural disaster leaves village erased, and people missing
- Hge News
- Aug 25
- 3 min read
Over 1,100 evacuated but locals fear more than 100 still buried under debris as climate disaster strikes India’s Himalayan state of Uttarakha
For Urmila Parashpe, a 48-year-old resident of Mumbai in the west Indian state of Maharashtra, it was a miracle to come out alive from the town of Dharali, which was swept away in India’s worst disaster in the Himalayas since 2013.
Urmila was with a group of six people in a car when she saw huge debris coming from the hills and descending upon Dharali, an important intersection to reach the Hindu pilgrimage site of Gangotri. It was in the afternoon of August 5 when the flash floods began.
The human cost of the disaster is still unfolding. While Urmila was lucky enough to have survived the incident, Asha Negi, a local resident of Dharali, has been begging officials to search for her missing 40-year-old son Abhishek, who used to run a small Maggi and tea shop.
“I have not heard from him ever since the incident happened, and his mobile has also been switched off.
Just tell me if he is alive and I will go home, or take me to the town and I will find him myself,” Asha was heard pleading with a security official at the base in the town of Matli, which was turned into a small base for evacuating people from the affected town
According to locals, dozens of houses, hotels, and homestays, along with an unknown number of people, were swept away. Locals claim over 100 people could be missing and buried under the debris.
According to the Uttarakhand state government 1,126 people have evacuated from Dharali, as well as another town nearby, Harshil, which was also affected by the landslide.
There are 68 people missing, including some 24 Nepali citizens.
The administration has been working day and night to restore the road from Uttarkashi to Dharali, which is about 70km away.
What caused the catastrophe
While the Hindu Kush Himalayan region is prone to natural disasters – in the last one decade over 3,500 people have lost their lives in this region –experts are divided on the exact cause of the latest case, though all point to climate-related factors.
Sanjay Vashisht, director of Climate Action Network South Asia, believes it was both a cloudburst and a glacial lake outburst that caused the lethal mudslide.
“Had it been just water, then the water would have passed in some time, but the mud which came uprooted the buildings there. The walls of the glacial lake were breached from the left and right sides due to a cloudburst,” he explained in a telephone conversation with Reuters.
Mohd Farooq Azam, a glacio-hydrologist with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, offers a different perspective. He believes several smaller lakes that were saturated burst in a cascading effect, with each breach helping trigger the next.
“When it came down on the way, it helped other lakes to burst and finally all the material (slurry) came down in the valley bottom,” he said.
Azam rules out a traditional cloudburst, noting there hadn't been heavy precipitation but rather sustained rainfall over 24 hours. He also suggests an ice and rock avalanche might have been the trigger.
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