 "'Uttarakhand rehabilitation to take more than a year'")
Notwithstanding a 'mammoth' exercise to rehabilitate devastated areas, it will take a year or even more to drag Uttarakhand out of the effects of the June calamity as vagaries of nature and unique geographical conditions have made the exercise difficult, Disaster Management Centre chief Piyush Rautela today said.
Given the scale of the tragedy which was of a pan-Indian nature with people from all over the country being killed and hundreds of villages swept away, it will be naive to bind the reconstruction and rehabilitation exercise in Uttarakhand in a specific time-frame, he told PTI.
It is over two months since the flashfloods and landslides left a trail of death and devastation in the state in mid June this year but life is still waiting to come back on track in the affected areas with 10234 families in 366 villages yet to be rehabilitated and 335 roads including major motor roads in the worst hit Chamoli, Rudraprayag, Uttarkashi and Pithoragarh districts still blocked at places making it difficult to take relief material to people, an official data said.
However, the state government is hopeful that the major highways including Rishikesh-Badrinath, Rishikesh-Gangotri and Rishikesh-Yamunotri highways are opened within the stipulated deadline of September 30.
The BRO and PWD personnel are on the job trying to restore the heavily damaged road network within the stipulated time frame but much will depend on the frequency of rainfall which keeps hampering the operations every now and then, Rautela said.
'Despite the best of intentions of the personnel engaged in reconstruction efforts nothing can be expected overnight. The weather is often bad and the hilly terrain in which the roads and bridges are being rebuilt don't let the operations go smoothly,' he said.
However, he said given the difficult terrain and monsoon vagaries the job being done is really commendable.In a scenario like this, it is not an easy job to open 1967 of a total of 2302 roads damaged in the calamity in just over two months, he said.
Given the scale of the tragedy which was of a pan-Indian nature with people from all over the country being killed and hundreds of villages swept away, it will be naive to bind the reconstruction and rehabilitation exercise in Uttarakhand in a specific time-frame, he told PTI.
It is over two months since the flashfloods and landslides left a trail of death and devastation in the state in mid June this year but life is still waiting to come back on track in the affected areas with 10234 families in 366 villages yet to be rehabilitated and 335 roads including major motor roads in the worst hit Chamoli, Rudraprayag, Uttarkashi and Pithoragarh districts still blocked at places making it difficult to take relief material to people, an official data said.
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1967 roads are open to traffic but only on a temporary basis.
However, the state government is hopeful that the major highways including Rishikesh-Badrinath, Rishikesh-Gangotri and Rishikesh-Yamunotri highways are opened within the stipulated deadline of September 30.
The BRO and PWD personnel are on the job trying to restore the heavily damaged road network within the stipulated time frame but much will depend on the frequency of rainfall which keeps hampering the operations every now and then, Rautela said.
'Despite the best of intentions of the personnel engaged in reconstruction efforts nothing can be expected overnight. The weather is often bad and the hilly terrain in which the roads and bridges are being rebuilt don't let the operations go smoothly,' he said.
However, he said given the difficult terrain and monsoon vagaries the job being done is really commendable.In a scenario like this, it is not an easy job to open 1967 of a total of 2302 roads damaged in the calamity in just over two months, he said.