A roar, and a ridge of the Himalayan Nanda Devi glacier broke away and fell into a gorge in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand. At 11.00 local time, the huge mass of water that rose in seconds from the Alaknanda and Dhauliganga rivers along with rocks and debris overwhelmed a dam, two power plants, bridges and roads. There is a risk of a massacre: the confirmed dead, with the bodies recovered by the rescuers, are 14. “The actual number has not yet been confirmed” but you fear that the dead are between 100 and 150, said the chief secretary of Uttarakhand , Om Prakash. According to various sources, the missing are between 150 and 200. No one knows exactly how many people were in the two power plants and how many along the rivers, two tributaries of the Ganges, to collect wood, or to work. And the videos shot by those who were on the heights of the gorge at the time of the tragedy are frightening, bounced and shared on social networks, taken by the major media sites in the world.
India, the dramatic moment when the Moment glacier knocks down the Uttarakhand dam, causing a giant flood
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Rescue was immediately started with the use of police and army teams, military airplanes and helicopters. About thirty workers were trapped in a 900-meter-long tunnel at the Tapovan power plant and some were rescued. But around 10pm local operations were halted due to rising water levels, the state’s Press Information Bureau said. An alert for a new rise in the water of the Dhauliganga River, in the Chamoli district, was issued in the evening. Warning the populations to keep away from the shores and from the flatter areas.
The neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous in India, has also put its riverside areas on alert. Meanwhile, teams of specialized personnel for research have been flown from Delhi to Dehradun, the state capital, and at dawn tomorrow morning they will be transferred, again by plane to the affected locations, according to the Indian Air commander Indranil Nandi Force.
“India is with Uttarakhand and the nation prays for the safety of all,” premier Narendra Modi tweeted, stressing that he is constantly monitoring the situation and being in constant contact with local authorities. “Full solidarity” with India on behalf of France was expressed by President Emmanuel Macron who expressed closeness to the missing and their families. Tomorrow two teams of glaciologists will go to the affected areas to try to verify the causes of the disaster in an area whose environmental fragility is well known. And repeatedly, many experts have called for a halt to large hydroelectric projects in the area.
“This disaster once again calls for serious scrutiny of the frenzy of hydroelectric dam construction in this eco-sensitive region,” said Ranjan Panda, a Combat Climate Change Network volunteer who deals with water, environmental issues. and climate change. And Uma Bharti, former Indian minister of water resources recalled on Twitter that when he was minister, in consideration of the sensitivity of the Himalayan ecosystem, he had asked “not to carry out energy projects on the Ganges and its main tributaries”.
In June 2013 there were at least 6,000 deaths in the state of Uttarakhand due to what was dubbed ‘Himalayan tsunami’: violent monsoons that caused landslides and floods, sweeping away entire villages, roads and bridges. Among the dead, many Hindu faithful on pilgrimage to the source of the Ganges.
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