Experts widen mouth of lake formed upstream Rishiganga
SDRF says 15-ft widening led to faster drain-out of water, which will prevent Chamoli-like tragedy
DEHRADUN: The expert team, which was sent to the lake formed upstream Rishiganga river after flash floods hit Chamoli district, has succeeded in widening the mouth of the lake by about 15 feet, leading to faster draining out of water, SDRF commandant Navneet Bhullar said.
He said the 30-member team, comprising scientists, personnel from SDRF and ITBP, and porters, have succeeded in widening the mouth of the lake from 20 feet to around 35 feet.
“In a daring effort, the team has widened the mouth of the lake in a very difficult terrain, which has increased the discharge from the lake. Due to this, the chances of lake burst or Chamoli-like tragedy happening again have been averted. And our team members are still camping there to try to widen the mouth further,” Bhullar said.
“The special equipment, quick deployable antenna (QDA) based on satellite communication, has been set up there and it is helping us to have real-time communication with the expert team.”
The expert team, which left
for the lake area on Friday, reached there on Saturday. They analysed the lake to find out ways of draining it out so that it doesn’t burst in future and lead to a Chamoli-like tragedy again.
The team, formed by state chief secretary Om Prakash, includes scientists from the Uttarakhand Space Application Centre and Geological Survey of India, apart from officers from ITBP and SDRF.
When inputs first came that a lake was forming again upstream Rishiganga, SDRF’s eight-member High Attitude Rescue Team (HART), which
included six people who had scaled Mount Everest in 2018 and Navneet Bhullar, was sent to the area for the ground survey.
The team sent one of its members, Manoj Joshi, to widen the lake mouth to some extent. He succeeded in widening it by around six feet, with the help of a rope.
Manoj Joshi, an Everest summiteer, said with the help of a rope, he reached the drainage point of the lake to see whether it can be widened.
“It was a very dangerous incline and widening it was difficult. I could widen it by a few feet only,” said Joshi.
On Sunday, QDA was flown to the lake area in a chopper for the expert team there to communicate from the remote terrain about their findings and what needs to done to drain the lake. On Saturday, an Air Force chopper took two Navy divers to the lake to measure the depth of the lake. The chopper hovered over the lake and Navy divers descended close to the lake surface and used their hand-held echolocation devices for measuring the depth of the lake. The lake depth has been found to be around 8 to 9 metres, according to SDRF DIG Ridhim Aggarwal.