Unending season of manmade disasters

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promotion of Uttarakhand as the perfect winter destination for weddings, Bollywood shoots and sunbathing — or “ghaam tapo” as he so elegantly put it — lies in shambles. His mere arrival on 6 March 2025 at Harsil was meant to magnetise tourists to this picturesque spot on the banks of the Bhagirathi, cradled by deodar forests, apple orchards and snow-capped peaks. Five months after that razzmatazz, vast swathes of Harsil and its sister village, Dharali, have been wiped out.

Sumit, a survivor from Dharali, recalls the horror of 5 August. “It was raining, and a thick fog shrouded the mountains all morning. Around 1.30 pm, there was a loud sound and a great grey river of mud poured into our village. Six avalanches followed through the day, though these were smaller than the first. It was terrifying. Large rocks kept falling through the night.”

You can see it — the sediment and the debris, 20 hectares of slush and sludge spread all around Dharali.

Those villagers who realised the magnitude of what was happening, managed to escape by running uphill. But due to the rain, a large number of workers were indoors, asleep in their rented rooms along the banks of the Kheer Ganga. Within seconds of the river turning turbulent, they were engulfed by the killer debris. Many wouldn’t even have known what hit them.

Grey-haired Lal Bahadur Sharma, who had rented three rooms of his homestay to workers, was one of the lucky residents who managed to escape. “Six boys lived there. We lost them all,” he said.

No clear figures are available on just how many local residents or migrant workers hired by hotels and restaurants have gone missing. Speaking to the local video channel Baramasa — run by the intrepid YouTuber Rahul Kotiyal — a Nepali woman said she and her husband had informed local authorities that at least 30 Nepali workers are untraceable. No one knows how many workers from Bihar are missing.

*Disturbing footage*

🚨More video of the horrific flash flood and landslide that hit Dharali village near Harsil, India. Half the village was swept away.

At least 4 are dead, over 50 missing. Rescue efforts by the Army, SDRF, NDRF, and locals are underway. pic.twitter.com/ErsbB6YpeI

— Volcaholic 🌋 (@volcaholic1) August 5, 2025

Uttarakhand: When commerce trumps common sense, disaster follows

Ten days after the catastrophe, the government claimed only 50 people were missing. Locals say 200 is more plausible. Security forces have (at the time of writing) managed to pull out just one body from under 50 feet of debris. As a Dharali local put it, “The debris is so thick and deep that a pickaxe hardly helps.”

When the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) along with the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) began using Ground Penetrating Radar to dig deeper, they only found water spouting out but no sign of missing bodies. Locals believe they’ll turn up eventually, floating down the rivers.

A set of videos taken by locals show bodies from repeated calamities at Kedarnath and other hill towns surfacing to this day. It’s not a horror film, just the horrible reality of these destroyed hills.

The sole survivor captured on video who did manage to get out of the debris alive is Balvinder Singh Panwar. “It’s a miracle,” he says. “I don’t know how I made it. I was returning from the temple and somehow pushed my way through.”

The parents of the lost workers and tourists seek closure, to no avail.

Following the disaster, the people of Dharali were flown by helicopter to Gangotri. Some have since returned to try and piece their lives back together. Reaching Dharali and Harsil by road has become next to impossible. The road — which runs along the Bhagirathi — has largely been destroyed, as have some key bridges.

Worse, a temporary lake has swamped the army camp near Harsil. With the water level rising steadily, further inundation of villages downstream is a real worry. The NDRF, armed forces and state agencies are working with a team of geologists to assess the lake’s stability and drain it, safely and manually.

#WATCH | Uttarkashi, Uttarakhand | After inspecting the recently formed temporary lake in the Harsil area due to heavy debris falling into Harsil Gad, District Magistrate Prashant Arya said that at present, the water is flowing smoothly from the mouth of the lake, due to which… pic.twitter.com/LoPYY0rZ6n

— ANI (@ANI) August 14, 2025

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Ayush Joshi, a waste management expert and member of the NGO Ganga Ahvaan, made it to Uttarkashi on 11 August with relief material. He points out, “Both the villages of Harsil and Bagori on the left bank of the Bhagirathi are in danger because the water level in the dam is rising steadily and can flood the neighbouring fields. A huge landslide has taken place in the village of Natala. The bridge to cross the Bhagirathi at Gangani village — which goes up to Dharali — has also been destroyed. The NDRF and army jawans have managed to construct a temporary bridge at Gangani but they will need to build some kind of kutcha road for food supplies to reach these areas.”

The Dhami government’s ban on local media coverage has enraged locals and galvanised reporters who walked all the way up to Dharali to provide first-hand news. Three young locals, who were also working in hotels and homestays but managed to escape the avalanche, were extremely critical of the rescue operations.

One of them said, “We are facing the worst aapda (calamity) of our lives. Our friends, relatives and co-workers were lost before our eyes, and we were unable to save them. We are all in a state of shock. But the rescue operations are most perfunctory. When the prime minister came in March this year, he brought a team of over 400 policemen. All of us villagers got together and pooled our resources to take care of them. Where are they now, when we need their support?”

The most shocking aspect of this calamity is the absence of any early warning systems (EWS). Given the sharp rise of extreme weather events caused by climate change, efficient EWS is among the many immediate actions that scientists recommend worldwide.

The existing EWS set up by the Uttarakhand government only warns of heavy rainfall. What can be effective are Doppler radars which monitor weather conditions within a radius of 100 km.

Uttarakhand actually has not one but three Doppler radars. These are installed at Lansdowne in Pauri Garhwal, Mukteshwar in Nainital and Surkanda in Tehri Garhwal. There are none in the higher reaches where Dharali and Harsil are located.

On 11 August, the state government made the belated decision that no commercial, government or private construction will be permitted in disaster prone zones. Too little, too late. Uttarakhand is heaving with thousands of hotels and houses being built on river flood plains and seismologically sensitive fault lines.

All the evidence points to the fact that the maximum damage to these hills over the last decade has been caused by the Char Dham road widening project. Not one, but several geologists and scientists have flagged this before successive governments. “When scientists speak the truth, the government thinks we are opposing them... All we are saying is use EWS, and save people,” says Prof. R.C. Sundriyal of the Department of Forestry, HNB Garhwal University.

Senior geologist and former scientist at Ahmedabad’s Physical Research Laboratory, Navin Juyal, had, in fact, sent a detailed report to the ministry of road transport in 2023, detailing the damage and warning of an avalanche hitting Dharali. On 5 August, it played out exactly as Juyal had predicted.

This is not just the story of Dharali and Harsil but of every Himalayan town and village built on glacial moraine. Over-burdened with unplanned construction, the Himalayas have crossed the tipping point. Unless we act now, we are in for an unending season of disasters.