KOLKATA/NEW DELHI, Oct 6 (Reuters) – At least 42 people were killed this week after a glacial lake burst its banks and triggered flash floods in the Indian Himalayas, government officials said on Friday, with rescuers missing as many as 150 people. The search continues.
Lake Lonak in the mountainous northeastern state of Sikkim overflowed on Wednesday after heavy rains and avalanches followed a cloud burst, causing major flooding in the Teesta River.
It was one of the region’s worst disasters in more than 50 years and is the latest in a series of extreme weather events that have caused widespread damage in South Asia’s Himalayas, which scientists have blamed on climate change. .
Officials in Sikkim said the disaster, which struck ahead of a popular festival and tourist season, affected the lives of 22,000 people in the state.
Javed Ahmad Ansari, 44, a resident of Teesta Valley, who runs a river rafting business, said, “We got a call from people that the river level might rise at 3 am and we ran for our lives.”
“We ran into the forest towards the hill… we saw the houses washed away. I can now only see the first floor of my house which is filled with sand, everything is submerged.”
Scientists and government officials were working on an early warning system for glacial flooding in Lake Lonak that, if fully operational, could give people more time to evacuate, officials involved in the project told Reuters.
Sikkim Chief Secretary Vijay Bhushan Pathak, the most senior bureaucrat, said rescuers had found 20 bodies in the state and 22 in neighboring West Bengal.
Among these 22 were six Indian soldiers who were swept away from Sikkim. Photographs of the remaining 16 will be circulated in Sikkim to ascertain whether they belong to the state or West Bengal, Pathak told Reuters by phone.
He said the number of missing had risen to 142, including 15 army personnel, as people stepped up search operations as the weather improved on Friday.
Army helicopters made four attempts to evacuate stranded tourists in the state’s highlands but were unsuccessful due to bad weather, Pathak said, adding that they would try again on Saturday.
Bandana Chhetri, a senior official of the state tourism department, said all the tourists, including more than 50 foreigners, were safe.
Firearms, explosives washed away.
Earlier on Friday, Tsetan Bhutia, a state official, said rescue and relief teams were struggling as areas in north Sikkim were completely cut off.
About 2,400 people have been evacuated so far and 7,600 people are in relief camps, Bhutia said. Private and government institutions in the area have been closed till October 15.
15 bridges were swept away in the state, hampering rescue operations. The Indian government said all bridges at the NHPC ( NHPC.NS ) hydropower station Teesta-V had either sunk or washed away.
Photos and videos on social media show roads and paths covered in mud and rocks, vehicles stuck and small, muddy rivers flowing down hills.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Defense said in a social media post that military equipment, including firearms and explosives, was swept into the Teesta River.
In a neighboring district of West Bengal state, people raised a mortar shell which later exploded, killing a child and injuring six people, local lawmaker Pradeep Kumar Burma told ANI news agency.
Sikkim received 101 millimeters (four inches) of rain in the first five days of October, twice the normal level, bringing floods worse than one in October 1968 that killed an estimated 1,000 people, the Meteorological Department said. People were killed.
The India Meteorological Department said heavy rain is forecast in some parts of the region on Friday, but the intensity of the rain is likely to decrease.
Sikkim, a small Buddhist state of about 650,000 people nestled in the mountains between Nepal, Bhutan and China, is cut off from Siliguri in West Bengal because the main highway, which connects it to the rest of the country, It was collapsed.
Additional reporting by Jitendra Dash in Bhubaneswar; Written by Shivam Patel and YP Rajesh; Edited by Michael Perry and Andrew Havens
Our Standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.