By Devjyot Ghoshal and Saurabh Sharma
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – As many as 150 people in North India are feared dead after a Himalayan glacier broke and swept away a hydroelectric dam on Sunday, with floods forcing the evacuation of villages downstream.
Om Prakash, general secretary of Uttarakhand, where the incident took place, told Reuters that the actual number had not yet been confirmed, but 100 to 150 people had been killed.
A witness reported a wall of dust, rock and water when an avalanche roared in the Dhauli Ganga River Valley, located more than 500 km (310 miles) north of New Delhi.
“It came very quickly, there was no time to warn anyone,” Sanjay Singh Rana, who lives at the top of the river in the rainy town of Uttarakhand, told Reuters by telephone. “I felt that even we would be swept away.”
Uttarakhand police chief Ashok Kumar told reporters that more than 50 people working at the dam, the Rishiganga Hydroelectric Project, were feared dead, although others were rescued. Kumar also said authorities had evacuated other dams to divert the water from the flooded Alakananda River.
Premier Narendra Modi said he was keeping a close eye on the situation.
“India stands with Uttarakhand and the nation prays for everyone’s security there,” he said on Twitter after speaking with state prime minister Trivendra Singh Rawat.
The federal government has said India’s air force is ready to help with the rescue operations, while Interior Minister Amit Shah has said disaster response teams are being transported to a plane to help with rescue and rescue. Army soldiers have already been deployed and its helicopters have conducted an air reconnaissance of the area.
The neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh, the population group of India, has placed its areas on the river on a high alert basis.
Footage shared by locals shows the water washing away parts of Rishiganga Dam, and everything that was in the way.
Videos on social media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed water flowing through a small dam site, washing away construction equipment.
“There are currently no additional water currents reported and there is no flooding anywhere,” Prime Minister Rawat said on Twitter.
“No loss of villages along Alaknanda has been reported.”
‘HIMALAYAN TSUNAMI’
Uttarakhand in the Himalayas is prone to floods and showers. In June 2013, record rains caused devastating floods that claimed nearly 6,000 lives.
That disaster was called the ‘tsunami of the Himalayas’ because of the water currents released into the mountainous area, which caused mud and rocks to collapse, houses buried, buildings, roads and bridges swept away.
Uma Bharti, the former minister of water resources in India and a senior leader of Modi’s party, has criticized the construction of a power project in the area.
“When I was a pastor, I asked that the Himalayas be a very sensitive place, so no power projects should be built on Ganga and its main tributaries,” she said on Twitter, referring to the main river flowing from the mountain. down flow.
Environmentalists have called for a halt to major hydroelectric projects in the state.
“This disaster again calls for a serious investigation into the hydropower dams in this ecosensitive region,” said Ranjan Panda, a volunteer from the Combat Climate Change Network who works on issues related to water, the environment and climate change.
“The government should no longer ignore warnings from experts and no longer build hydropower projects and extensive highway networks in this fragile ecosystem.”
(Reporting by Devjyot Ghoshal, Jatindra Dash, Saurabh Sharma, Krishna N. Das and Manoj Kumar; Edited by William Mallard and Christian Schmollinger)