Over 70 killed in floods and landslides
Uttarakhand orders closure of schools and bans all religious and tourist activities
The death toll from days of flooding and landslides in India crossed 70 yesterday, including several families swept away or crushed in their homes by avalanches of mud and rocks.
Experts say they were victims of evermore unpredictable and extreme weather across South Asia in recent years caused by climate change and exacerbated by deforestation, damming and excessive development.
In Uttarakhand in northern India, officials said 46 people had died in recent days with 11 missing.
Cloudbursts
At least 30 were killed in seven separate incidents in Uttarakhand’s Nainital region early Tuesday, after cloudbursts — an ultra-intense deluge of rain — triggered landslides and destroyed several structures.
Five of the dead were from a single family whose house was buried by a massive landslide, local official Pradeep Jain told AFP.
Authorities ordered the closure of schools and banned all religious and tourist activities in the state.
Television footage and social media videos showed residents wading through knee-deep water near Nainital lake, a tourist hotspot, and the Ganges bursting its banks in Rishikesh.
The floods almost swept away an elephant near the Corbett Tiger Reserve — home to 164 of the big cats and 600 elephants — but in a video that went viral, the animal managed to battle the strong currents and swim to safety.
Uttarakhand reported 178.4mm rain in the first 18 days of October — almost 500 per cent more than the average, the Hindustan Times reported citing Indian Meteorological Department data.
And the state’s Mukteshwar area reported 340.8mm rainfall in the 24 hours until Tuesday morning, the most since the weather station was set up there in 1897, the newspaper said.
Heavy rain in Kerala
In Kerala state in southern India, the death toll reached 39 yesterday.
The coastal state has been battered by heavy rain since Friday and thousands have been moved to safer locations. More than 200 homes were destroyed and almost 1,400 damaged.
Kerala has also seen an increase in natural disasters, including in 2018 when nearly 500 people perished in the worst flooding in a century.
Environmentalists blame an increase in extreme weather in the warming Arabian Sea as well as excessive development in the Western Ghats mountain range.
After a brief respite, forecasters are warning of more heavy rain in the coming days with alerts issued in several places in Kerala.