Rainfall data (April 2021 and May 2021) of some towns of the Darjeeling - Sikkim Himalaya, STH activities, Cyclone 'YAAS' and the Landslides

April 2021 rainfall

May 2021 rainfall

STH Activities

1. NIDM webinar
Participated in a national level webinar organized by NIDM on 'Capacity Building among Rural Communities' where I spoke on STH experience in working with rural people and the dire necessity of 'Community Based Disaster RIsk Management' (CBDRM)

2. Reporting on Cyclone 'YAAS'

We kept a close track on Cyclone 'YAAS', the first cyclone to form in the Bay in 2021 from the time it formed in the Bay until it dissipated. The track and position was reported extensively in the STH WhatsApp Group 'HAZARD ALERTS' which has a large following in our region.

3. Keeping a tab on the landslides
It goes without saying that any major weather event in the Bay will impact the mountains of  the Darjeeling- Sikkim Himalaya which are barely 600km north of the Bay of Bengal - and so it was with Cyclone YAAS. The rainfall activity in our region spiked between the
25-28May2021 and it caused a number of landslides in Sikkim as well as the hills of Darjeeling/Kalimpong.
Some of the landslides have been documented here

Praful Rao with Ms Shreya Gurung
Kalimpong district
Darjeeling Sikkim HImalaya

STH activities: Participating in IMI's Webinar on Current Disaster Discourse and Lessons from Chamoli (27Mar2021)

 IMI's (https://inmi.in/) 3 hr webinar on Lesson's from the recent Chamoli disaster in Uttarakhand was held online on 27Mar2021 with experts from Uttarakhand (Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology) as well as Dr Saibal Ghosh from GSI's GHRM, talking about the disaster.
STH helped pool in the resource persons as well as participated - talking about the need to standardize Landslide Reporting in the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) using the Landslip Reporting form  and the Landslide Reporting App developed by Project Landslip .
Dr KR Vishwanathan, representative of Practical Action (India) spoke at length about the landslide reporting tools.

The webinar was attended by representatives of the State Disaster Management Authorities of Uttarakhand and Sikkim as well as IMI representatives from across the IHR.

Praful Rao
Kalimpong district
Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya

Excerpts from the Webinar held on 12Sep2013 by Interaction for "FEDEX award for Innovations in Disaster Preparedness"

SaveTheHills is shortlisted as one of the 6 finalists for the FEDEX award for "Innovations in Disaster Preparedness" and as such participated in a webinar organized by Interaction on12Sep2013.
Placed above is a 12 minute clip, a sort of collage of the webinar of 12Sep2013. The entire program lasted a little more than an hour and mercifully the internet here was rock steady for the duration.
Anticipating connectivity problems STH had uploaded a  pre-recorded 3min presentaion onto Youtube much earlier and the same was shown during the webinar (whereas most other finalists presented LIVE)
We regret not being able to upload the entire proceedings due to costs involved.

Praful Rao,
Kalimpong,
Darjeeling district