Joshimath
"Himalayas are not Greater Kailash Parking Lot" I Joshimath Sinks I Sunita Narain I Barkha Dutt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzSRgQ_rv04
Jan 9, 2023 Joshimath in Uttarakhand is on the verge of sinking. The city has been declared a landslide-subsidence zone. Huge cracks have developed in hundreds of houses and roads. Over 60 families have been evacuated to relief centres. Barkha Dutt speaks to Sunita Narain, treasurer of the Society for Environmental Communications and editor of the fortnightly magazine, Down To Earth.
Video by Hindustan Times
07/01/2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYRE33_1wzc
Uttarakhand's Joshimath is sinking after cracks appeared in houses, temples and hotels. Situated at an altitude of 1890 meters in the Garhwal Himalayas, residents are living in constant fear of a major disaster and are forced to spend day and night in bone-chilling winter. Unplanned construction, topography, and geology are some of the factors that make this temple town highly vulnerable.
The town has undergone unplanned construction, drastic road widening and hydropower projects that have ignored multiple warnings.
Residents of the ancient pilgrim town of Joshimath were forced to flee their homes in the freezing weather of January. Walls had cracked open, while foundations were tilting and sinking in a quarter of the approximately 2,500 buildings in the town. Federal and Uttarakhand state government officials are moving thousands of residents into hotels while halting all work on road widening and a hydropower project. Experts point out that this was a disaster waiting to happen because the authorities ignored multiple warnings over decades about the way roads and hydropower projects were being built.
Kalachand Sain, head of the Dehradun-based Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, said Joshimath – a town 2,000 m above sea level – has always been vulnerable because it sits atop the debris of an old landslide. This has failed to stop a building spree in recent years, with ill-planned construction destabilising the soil and choking underground water channels, so that water starts accumulating under the foundations.
This process has been accelerated manifold by the work to widen the road to Badrinath – another pilgrimage centre higher up in the Himalayas. That road is part of the Char Dham (Four Pilgrimage Centres) road widening project. There have been multiple reports that trees are being cut and natural water channels choked because the project is failing to follow the government’s own principles on how to build a road in a mountain area. The road widening work has now been halted.
11/01/2023