Floods

September 24, 2019

Flash Floods

Relief Brings Its Own Disasters

Will Prayers Save Farmers in the Land of the Gods?

In the Land of the Gods, Disaster Response Falls Short of Divine

Women Hit Hard by Natural Disasters

When Calamity Strikes, Think Local

India Beats a Cyclone

The June 2013 flash floods in Uttarakhand in North India was a series of extreme weather events that culminated in an unprecedented natural calamity. Dam burst, cloudburst, flash floods and glacial melt resulted in unprecedented flood fury. Within 45 minutes the flood fury had taken a huge toll of pilgrims on their way to pilgrimage centres that dot the Himalayas - giving the state of Uttarakhand the epithet "Land of the gods". Mud flows accompanied landslides, Cold waters of the glacial melt / flood led to cardiac arrests for the elderly caught in flood waters. The death toll has still not been finalised, six years after the calamity. Trekking pilgrims caught in whirling flash floods were deposited in remote caves, valleys and forests where trained Search and Rescue teams could not gain access. The natural calamity it turned out was complemented by unsustainable development or plain monetary greed. Tourist infrastructure on fragile river banks, and mountain valleys was a recipe for disaster waiting to happen. Corruption, economic mismanagement and unsustainable economic development were powerful contributing factors to the scale of the disaster.

Article links at the start of this blog are articles written by me and published in Inter Press news Service in 2013... Reading these articles will give you a rather deep insight into the management of floods and flash floods. The pictures in thios photo blog speak for themselves of course!

The only positive was the fact that the Kedarnath temple withstood the flood although the holy shrine itself was littered with corpses of the pilgrims at the very entrance of the temple.