Authorities in an Indian Himalayan town have stopped construction activities and started moving hundreds of people to temporary shelters after a temple collapsed and cracks appeared in over 600 houses because of sinking of land, officials said Saturday.
Residents of Joshimath town in Uttarakhand state say they started noticing cracks in houses, especially after 2021 floods in the region. No injury was reported in the temple collapse late Friday and those living nearby had vacated the area a day earlier.
Himanshu Khurana, a district administrator, said more than 60 families have been moved to government relief camps. The number is likely to go up to 600 families, media reports said.
Television images also showed cracks in roads, hampering the movement of vehicles.
Ranjit Sinha, a top state disaster management official, said the immediate cause of the cracks "seems to be the faulty drainage system, which has resulted in water seepage under the houses that has led to their sinking."
The government will pay 4,000 rupees ($50) per month for six months to those rendered homeless in Joshimath, a temple town of around 25,000 people that sits at an altitude of 1,890 meters (6,200 feet) and falls on key Hindu pilgrim as well as trekking circuits, Khurana said.
Tens of thousands of devotees heading for Badrinath and Him Kund Sahib, key Hindu and Sikh pilgrimage sites, pass through Joshimath, 490 kilometers (305 miles) northeast of New Delhi. The huge flow of pilgrims and tourists saw the town expanding exponentially over the years with the massive construction of buildings and roadways, which some experts have linked to land subsidence.
The construction activities that were temporarily halted include the Chardham all-weather road โ a flagship federal government enterprise to connect various Hindu pilgrimage sites, a project to set up trolleys pulled by ropes to carry pilgrims and tourists in nearby Auli, and hydropower stations.
The region witnessed a devastating cloudburst โ an extreme rainfall in a short time โ that resulted in the death of hundreds in 2013 as well as severe flooding in 2021. Experts say fast shrinking glaciers, in part due to climate change, is also another reason the region is hit by repeated disasters.
"Between 2015 and mid-2021, at least 7,750 extreme rainfall and cloudburst instances have been noted in Uttarakhand. Such instances are detrimental to Joshimath as they may increase the number of impacted buildings, eventually exacerbating the vulnerability of the locals," said Kavita Upadhyay, a water-policy expert who is currently a research associate in the Oslo Metropolitan University's Riverine Rights project.
Upadhyay, who is from Uttarakhand and lives in the region, said unabated large-scale infrastructure projects as well as uncontrolled tourist inflow have also contributed to land sinking.
"The slopes of Joshimath are formed from landslide debris. This means that there's a limit to which the town can be burdened by buildings or disturbed by activities such as the construction of big infrastructure projects like dams and roads."
A study by the Uttarakhand State Disaster Management Authority has warned that construction by removing boulders and blasting the hillside would lead to severe environmental damage.
In May last year, Meera Rawat, a resident, was startled while cooking in the kitchen when she heard a gurgling sound of water flowing underneath the floor.
"That day, I realized something bad was going to happen in our town of Joshimath. In September, I saw a small crack in the floor. In December, it widened, and we vacated the house," Meera said.
I was in that area in October, and I happen to be a practicing geo-structural engineer, so I can say that the first video starting at about 1:30 actually does a good job of describing the geotechnical issues. I've submitted an abstract for my local engineering society's annual symposium to talk about what I saw there.
I was astounded that there were so many landslides everywhere due to poor construction practices. The geology of the lower slopes of Gharwal Himalayas (as seen from road cuts and landslide scars) was mostly unconsolidated, relic landslide debris. Very unstable. I know of one geo-structural engineer who refused to ride on the mountain roads and cancelled a trek after shortly after starting the drive due to fear of those roads. The landslide risk is real, uncontrolled drainage and poor planning is making it worse. The landslide activity is increasing and construction practices do not consider erosion control at all, so the sediment load in the Ganges is a big problem. I saw huge sandbars in areas downstream from large civil construction works. Tragic.
life I wasn't worried. I was there under the Grace of the Guru. [Link]
Virginia, USA. It was my first email handle going back to the early nineties and it stuck. Named my engineering firm after it 21 years ago. Logo is on this webpage. [Link] The username is a play on my profession ( geo -structural engineer) and last name ( Mo ser), with some Vedic mystical symbolism in there for fun.
g/e represents atman/jiva as two faces. 0m0 represents the cosmos (in cross-section) - the two 0s represent the toroidal shape of creation and the m represents emptiness with the notch in the m representing Narayan's navel from which creation emerges. There's also the primordial sound OM in there, and also MO which I learned has sacred in qigong practice many years ago, but I've forgotten what it is supposed to mean.
ge0m0 Grace of the Guru, classy ! (as are Jake and Elwood )
i was thinking you combined geo (earth) and uomo (man) which is why i thought Italy, , anyway i enjoyed reading your version, that wall is spectacular (i have many questions for another time), and OM, haha, thank you ge0m0 !
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I was astounded that there were so many landslides everywhere due to poor construction practices. The geology of the lower slopes of Gharwal Himalayas (as seen from road cuts and landslide scars) was mostly unconsolidated, relic landslide debris. Very unstable. I know of one geo-structural engineer who refused to ride on the mountain roads and cancelled a trek after shortly after starting the drive due to fear of those roads. The landslide risk is real, uncontrolled drainage and poor planning is making it worse. The landslide activity is increasing and construction practices do not consider erosion control at all, so the sediment load in the Ganges is a big problem. I saw huge sandbars in areas downstream from large civil construction works. Tragic.
[Link]
always thought you had an interesting username... are you in Italy ?
Virginia, USA. It was my first email handle going back to the early nineties and it stuck. Named my engineering firm after it 21 years ago. Logo is on this webpage. [Link] The username is a play on my profession ( geo -structural engineer) and last name ( Mo ser), with some Vedic mystical symbolism in there for fun.
g/e represents atman/jiva as two faces. 0m0 represents the cosmos (in cross-section) - the two 0s represent the toroidal shape of creation and the m represents emptiness with the notch in the m representing Narayan's navel from which creation emerges. There's also the primordial sound OM in there, and also MO which I learned has sacred in qigong practice many years ago, but I've forgotten what it is supposed to mean.
i was thinking you combined geo (earth) and uomo (man) which is why i thought Italy, , anyway i enjoyed reading your version, that wall is spectacular (i have many questions for another time), and OM, haha, thank you ge0m0 !