It’s published
At least four people have been killed and several others have been trapped under the debris after flash floods wiped out several homes and shops in northern India, officials said Tuesday.
Local TV channels found floods surged down the mountain and crashed into Dalari, a mountain village of Himalayas in Uttarkasi district of Uttarakhand.
Floods flooded homes, wiped out roads and destroyed local markets.
“Around 12 hotels have been washed away and some have collapsed,” said Prashant Arya, the administrator.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dami said the rescue agency was working “on the foothold of the war.”
“We are doing everything we can to save lives and provide peace of mind,” he said in a statement.
India’s National Disaster Management Agency said it had requested three helicopters to assist with rescue and relief efforts as rescuers struggled to access remote terrain.
Officials are not providing numbers to those trapped or missing.
Indian weather agents are forecasting more heavy rain in the region in the coming days.
Authorities are asking schools to remain closed in several districts, including the schools and Haridwar cities.
The sudden, intense downpour in a small area known as cloudbursts is becoming increasingly common in Uttarakhand, a Himalayan region that is prone to flash floods and landslides during the monsoon season.
Cloudbursts can wreaking havoc by causing severe flooding and landslides, affecting thousands of people in mountainous areas.
When a similar cloudburst destroyed Uttarakhand in 2013, more than 6,000 people were killed and 4,500 villages were affected.
The impact of climate change
Experts say cloudbursts have been increasing in recent years due to climate change, but the unexpected development of mountainous regions has also increased storm damage.
Floods in northern India are the latest in a series of disasters that have hit the five-country Himalayas in the past few months.
Heavy rains caused by high temperatures and floods and landslides caused by melting glaciers have killed more than 300 people in Pakistan, the country’s disaster agency reported.
In 2024 alone, there were 167 disasters, including the majority of the continent, including storms, floods, heat waves and earthquakes, according to the emergency events database maintained by the University of Reuben in Belgium.
These have resulted in losses of over $32 billion (27 billion euros), researchers found.
A 2023 report by the Nepal-based International Center for Integrated Mountain Development found that glaciers melt at an unprecedented proportion in the Hindu Kush and the Himalayas range.
The study found that at least 200 of the more than 2,000 glacial lakes in the area were at risk of overflow. This can cause catastrophic damage.
Additional sources •AP
