Balasun Tea Garden, P.O. Sonada, Sukhia Pokharia Dev. Block, Darjeeling has been recently taken over by Jai Shree Group of Companies.
The history of landslide in this area goes back to a decade. But the real problem started from the year 2003. As per the resident of the area, when the western side of the hill started giving up because of the sinking area which is at the base of the hill connecting to the Balasun River, situation started worsening.
With the depression in the Bay of Bengal, Darjeeling had incessant and heavy rain for a week in August 2006. This increased the landslide. 25 houses were totally washed away, 35 houses irreparable and the remaining 15 houses within the vulnerable area. No casualties took place. Most of the people are daily wage earners in the tea estate.
On 29th August 2006, the impact of the landslide was such that the houses in three hamlets started developing cracks. The appearance of the crack was just a hairline and within five to six days the crack grew to six to eight inches. In few of the houses the cracks were more than one feet and more than six feet deep. Cracks could be seen crossing from one room to another, and from one house to another, which made dwelling in the houses hazards. The three most affected hamlets were Pari Gaon, Ghuraya Gaon and Babu Gaon.
The people were relocated within the TE but the landslide continues.
Roshan Rai
The history of landslide in this area goes back to a decade. But the real problem started from the year 2003. As per the resident of the area, when the western side of the hill started giving up because of the sinking area which is at the base of the hill connecting to the Balasun River, situation started worsening.
With the depression in the Bay of Bengal, Darjeeling had incessant and heavy rain for a week in August 2006. This increased the landslide. 25 houses were totally washed away, 35 houses irreparable and the remaining 15 houses within the vulnerable area. No casualties took place. Most of the people are daily wage earners in the tea estate.
On 29th August 2006, the impact of the landslide was such that the houses in three hamlets started developing cracks. The appearance of the crack was just a hairline and within five to six days the crack grew to six to eight inches. In few of the houses the cracks were more than one feet and more than six feet deep. Cracks could be seen crossing from one room to another, and from one house to another, which made dwelling in the houses hazards. The three most affected hamlets were Pari Gaon, Ghuraya Gaon and Babu Gaon.
The people were relocated within the TE but the landslide continues.
Roshan Rai
1 comment:
Hi,
Thank you for putting up this blog and doing all the ground work on spreading awareness on this issue.
It would be great if we could get more comments/view points on the postings. Towards this, one quick suggestion I have is to allow anonymous postings to enable ppl to give quick inputs without having to go about creating an id.
Please do continue your great work and also let us know if there is any concrete action we could take towards tackle this issue
Regards,
Namgyal
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