Uttarakhand govt to conduct comprehensive survey of disaster-prone cities

Uttarakhand government will conduct a comprehensive survey of disaster-prone cities and towns, tenders for which have been invited, officials said.

Director of Uttarakhand Landslide Mitigation and Management Centre Shantanu Sarkar said tenders will be verified after monsoon and work on the survey could take time.

Right now we have started the process which is at the planning stage. We have not yet decided which cities or towns will be included in this, Sarkar said. Geophysical and geo-mapping investigation of cities will be part of the survey, he said.

In January this year, the land subsidence crisis in Joshimath grabbed national attention. Huge cracks had appeared in many houses, fields and roads making the town unsafe to live in, and a large number of people had to be moved to safer places.

The state government also got various national level technical institutes to investigate various aspects of the Joshimath subsidence. It also asked experts to ascertain whether the 520 MW Tapovan Vishnugad Hydroelectric Project, which has an underground tunnel passing near Joshimath, was responsible for the landslide and cracks.

Institutes such as the Central Building Research Institute, National Geophysical Research Institute, Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Geological Survey of India, Central Ground Water Board, Indian Institute of Remote Sensing and IIT Roorkee had studied the town from various aspects. However, their findings are yet to be known.

After the land subsidence crisis in Joshimath, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami had said that a study of load bearing capacity of all major hill towns of the state, including Joshimath, would be conducted.

Authorities have said that since Uttarakhand is disaster-prone, it is very important to know the load bearing capacity of its cities and towns.

Piyush Rautela, executive director of the State Disaster Management Authority, said that the load carrying capacity of different places in the same city or town may vary and this can be ascertained only after a detailed study or investigation.

This monsoon, heavy rains have wreaked havoc in the state killing 78 people and injuring 47 more due to landslides, cloudbursts, etc. Eighteen more people are still missing.

According to the State Emergency Operation Center, 1,285 houses have also been damaged in these calamities.

In Jakhan village of Vikasnagar tehsil of Dehradun district, 10 houses were completely razed to the ground due to landslides last week, while the rest of the houses there developed huge cracks. Subsequently, the residents of the entire village had to be shifted from there.