NEW DELHI/KOLKATA, Oct 5 (Portal) – At least 14 people were killed and 102 missing on Thursday after heavy rains caused a glacial lake in the Himalayas of northeast India to overflow its banks, the worst such disaster in the region for more than five years was decades.
Lhonak Lake in Sikkim state overflowed its banks on Wednesday, causing severe flooding that authorities said has affected the lives of 22,000 people. It is the latest deadly weather event in South Asia’s mountains attributed to climate change.
According to the meteorological department, Sikkim received 101 mm (4 inches) of rain in the first five days of October, more than double normal, triggering floods worse than those in October 1968 that killed an estimated 1,000 people.
The ministry has predicted heavy rain in parts of Sikkim and neighboring states over the next three days.
The recent flooding was exacerbated by water released from the state-run NHPC’s Teesta V dam, local officials said. Four of the dam’s gates were washed away and it was unclear why they were not opened in time, a government source told Portal.
Early Thursday, the state disaster agency said 26 people had been injured and 102 were missing, including 22 army personnel. Eleven bridges were washed away, complicating rescue operations that were already affected by heavy rain.
Authorities in neighboring Bangladesh were on alert as an official from the state water development agency warned that five districts in the northern part of the country could be flooded by a rise in the level of the Teesta River, which flows into Bangladesh downstream from Sikkim.
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“Efforts are continuing to unearth vehicles submerged under the mud at Burdang near Singtam. The search for the missing persons is now focused on the areas downstream of the Teesta River,” an Indian defense spokesman said.
Fuel shortage, food available
Video footage from news agency ANI, in which Portal has a minority stake, showed floods rushing into built-up areas where several houses collapsed. Army bases and other facilities were damaged and vehicles were flooded.
Satellite images showed that almost two-thirds of the lake appeared to be drained.
Sikkim, a small state of about 650,000 people located in the mountains between Nepal, Bhutan and China, was cut off from Siliguri in neighboring West Bengal because the main road collapsed.
State lawmaker GT Dhungel told Portal that petrol and diesel had become scarce in the state capital Gangtok but food was readily available.
A cloudburst on Wednesday quickly dumped large amounts of rain on Lhonak Lake, about 150 km (90 miles) north of Gangtok near the border with China, triggering flash floods in the Teesta Valley.
A 2020 report from India’s National Disaster Management Agency said glacial lakes are growing, posing a potentially major risk to infrastructure and life downstream as Himalayan glaciers melt due to climate change.
“Unfortunately, this is the latest in a series of deadly flash floods to hit the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region this monsoon, highlighting the reality of this region’s extreme vulnerability to climate change,” said Director General Pema Gyamtsho of Nepal-based International Center for Integrated Mountain Development.
Other mountainous regions of India and parts of neighboring Pakistan and Nepal have been hit by heavy rains, floods and landslides in recent months, killing scores of people.
A report by scientists at India’s National Remote Sensing Center warned a decade ago that the chance of the lake overflowing was “very high” at 42%.
Reporting by Subrata Nag Choudhury in Kolkata, Jatindra Dash in Bhubaneswar, Tanvi Mehta and Krishn Kaushik in New Delhi, additional reporting by and Sarita Chaganti Singh, Ruma Paul and Rajendra Jadhav; Editing by Robert Birsel, Michael Perry, YP Rajesh and Kim Coghill
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