A dramatic shift from deficient rain upto 25Sept followed by a large surplus thereafter. |
The impact of the heavy rains in the month end has already been covered in a separate post here
Praful Rao
SaveTheHills
9475033744
savethehills@gmail.com
SaveTheHills(STH) is a group of concerned citizens who are raising awareness about landslides in Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya. Many landslides are the direct or indirect result of human interference and preventable if sufficient care is taken. As such, unless we begin a comprehensive and sustained program towards landslide management, prevention and mitigation, the consequences of ignoring years of human callousness will, in the future be devastating.
A dramatic shift from deficient rain upto 25Sept followed by a large surplus thereafter. |
The impact of the heavy rains in the month end has already been covered in a separate post here
Praful Rao
SaveTheHills
9475033744
savethehills@gmail.com
A woman washes the money she recovered while scavenging for lost property in a flood affected area of Rangpo (Sikkim) on 06Oct2023 - photo credit Praveen |
As I write, it is very early morning on 04Oct2024 and it was exactly at this time last year that I was up at my home in Kalimpong, trying to contact and verify with people, mainly in Sikkim, about whether a GLOF had actually taken place in the Teesta valley.
In the meantime my cellphone was receiving images and videos of the floods as the wall of water tore down the valley. Just verifying what was happening in order to report and record it accurately kept me engaged the entire day and next, while my young friend and photographer Praveen Chhetri visited Teesta Bazar which the GLOF hit around 4am. He recorded the impact of the GLOF as it happened.
I did not know then that this process of recording the GLOF and its impact would keep us busy for an entire year but it has - and has required numerous visits to many parts of the Teesta valley including one trip made in Nov2023 to Chungthang where the 1200mw Sikkim Urja hydroelectric dam was destroyed by the GLOF.
What we have in this blog is perhaps the most comprehensive photographic record of what was the largest GLOF which took place in the Himalayas. Praveen and I certainly have hundreds of images, many videos and voice recordings of the interviews of affected people that we did during the course of the year.
Landslide on NH10 near Teesta bridge on 27Sep2024 (27 03 40.2 N 88 25 35.3 E)Large landslide on NH10 near Melli (27.08388889N 88.45098611E) Other places in the Teesta ValleyFlooded Darjeeling - Kalimpong road near Teesta bridge, 28Sep2024. The debris and sand deposits by the GLOF of Oct2023 had raised the level of the Teesta river by as much as 4-5m so heavy rain Flood affected areas of Teesta bazar. As mentioned earlier, the GLOF of Oct2023 has pushed the riverbed levels up by 4-5m and as such the river runs perilously close to many densely populated areas - Melli, SIngtam and Rangpo to name a few. Heavy rain in the valley invariably results in flooding of these areas.always results in the river flooding this road. Teesta Low Dam Project III at 27Mile and the flooded Bangay bazar bridge (26°59´38.20´´N 88°26´32.83´´E) Melli town and stadium ( 27°05´23.03´´N 88°27´28.01´´). The stadium which was entirely covered by debris and sand by the GLOF in Oct2023 had been painstakingly cleaned by the town but it has been rendered unusable by the repeated flooding of the river. The GTA Covid Hospital (27°04´48.63´´N 88°25´50.37´´E) lying derelict on the banks of the Rangeet river since the GLOF of Oct2023. Parts of the one lane road leading up to the hospital from Teesta Bazar has been under the river for a year now and the recent rains have inundated even more areas of the road. Other parts of the Kalimpong and Darjeeling districtsMajor landslide in the vicinity of Kalimpong town at the by-pass road, 7th mile (27 04 13.9 N 88 26 56.8 E). In Sep 2024, Kalimpong received less rain than Darjeeling and Kurseong and as such we never had as many landslides.This large landslide took place on 28Sep at around3.30pm.Subsidence due to mountain stream erosion (jhora) in a densely populated area of Kalimpong municipality (27 03 47.0 N 88 27 45.8 E). The subsidence (seen here covered by plastic sheets to prevent water ingress) occurred during daytime on 28Sep2024 when the stream was gorged with runoff from upstream paved surfaces. My concern here is that this whole area is located above a landslide prone zone on which we have done a story in 2010. Landslide in the Darjeeling Municipal area at Hooker Road, on 26Sep2024 Landslide at Lower Bhaktey bustee in Darjeeling Sikkim received much less rainfall in late Sep2024 resulting in much less devastation and landslides. I am sure there were many more unreported landslides and instances of flooding caused by the unusual heavy rains and we will keep updating this blog on the reports, when received. We will also be surveying the affected areas in due course of time. My thanks to all HA members whose images and reports I have used liberally here and elsewhere - all with the intention of recording the event for posterity. Documentation of parts of the above report was supported by Royal Enfield, as part of their Social Mission Initiative Praful Rao SaveTheHills savethehills@gmail.com 9475033744 |
The National Highway 10 (NH10) which connects Siliguri to Gangtok and is the lifeline for Sikkim and Kalimpong district runs along the river valley almost hugging the banks of the river for almost 50 odd km. The monsoons extracted a heavy price for this closeness in Aug2024 - the highway was closed for almost 20 days due to landslides and erosion. As per the above data:
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