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Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Fierce battle of rain, landslide took off peoples' life in Kedarnath

Earlier heat stoke took of lives and now the worst rains at Uttrakhand.
Standing at a height of 11,760 feet and surrounded by majestic snow-capped peaks, the holy town of Badri Kedarnath was a picture of devastation after torrential rains in the eastern Himalayas breached a glacier, flooded mountain rivers and triggered scores of landslides on June 16, 2013. Many local residents, tourists to this very picturesque region, and Hindu pilgrims to Kedarnath and Badrinath – are dead or missing. A massive rescue operation is under way to reach survivors in the flood-hit Indian state of Uttarakhand, where at least 150 people have died. More than 50,000 people are stranded after the floods swept away buildings.
The horrific disaster, described by some as a ‘Himalayan tsunami’, was triggered by excessively heavy rainfall of more than 220mm in a region home to the headwaters of the river Ganges. The major cause of the devastation of Kedarnath town was the breaking of the Kedar Dome, a glacier-like body that caused a rupture of the Charbari lake reservoir less than 6km from the shrine. Locals said a huge rock as high as the temple broke away from the Kedar Dome and got stuck some distance behind the shrine.
Source: http://www.oshonews.com/2013/06/badri-kedarnath/

Was it a manmade disaster?  “It was a temple. Now it is not even a home.”

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