DEHRADUN: The death toll in the Gaurikund cloudburst and landslide disaster is expected to rise to over 30. State government sources have released a list of 10 more people missing and confirmed a total of 23 missing, while more than 10 members of the Nepali-origin community are also reported missing, apart from the government figures. Locals are calling it a disaster reminiscent of the Kedarnath tragedy of 2013.
Following the landslide disaster on Thursday, senior officials, including State Disaster Management Secretary Dr Ranjit Singh as special representative of the Chief Minister, visited the affected area of Gaurikund on Saturday. After taking stock of the situation, a high-level team directed the local administration to remove the temporary kiosks and stalls built there, after which 30 shops in the vicinity of the spot, including restaurants and small grocery stores, were removed.
Gora Bahadur, an eyewitness to the horrific night of the Gaurikund tragedy, whose younger brother Amar and seven of his family members were swept away in the disaster, told The New Indian Express over telephone from Gaurikund: "We know that my brother and his family are not alive. Our only demand to the administration and the government is to help us find their bodies so that they can be duly cremated. A total of 30 people are missing since this disaster, in which there is no hope of any survival."
District Disaster Management Officer Nandan Singh Rajwar told The New Indian Express, "The number of missing/dead after the landslide has increased to 23, including 17 people of Nepali origin, two from Rudraprayag and two from other states."
Relief teams have recovered the bodies of three people on Friday, although their names were not on the missing list. The three are of Nepali origin, identified as Devi Bahadur, Tek Bahadur and Prakash Tamta.
Mayaram Goswami, 63, an 11th generation member of Durgadutt Semwal's family, which has been carrying out religious work in the Gaurikund area for the past 900 years, told The New Indian Express, "20 years ago, there used to be 6 feet of snow in this area, which has now come down to 6 inches. Due to increasing human intervention in the Himalayan region, the mountains are becoming unbalanced."
Expressing deep concern over the current outbreak of nature, environmentalist Dev Raghavendra told The New Indian Express, "A decade after the Kedarnath tragedy, nature is again in terrible form, which is a clear warning to humans that we should seriously rethink our past mistakes. Moreover, if humans and the elected government are not able to properly 'communicate' with nature, we should try to learn and understand from its changed behaviour."
According to the SDRF spokesperson, "116 people have died in landslides and flood disasters in the state since June this year and 980 people have been rescued by relief teams."