Landslide rocks Nainital lake area; boulders, debris fall into waters
DEHRADUN: A major landslide occurred on one side of Nainital lake with debris and big boulders falling into the lake waters on Tuesday, officials said.
The landslide occurred on Thandi Sadak, which encircles one side of the lake from Naina Devi temple. Above the landslide site, there is a girls’ hostel of Kumaon University. However, only two girls were living in the hostel, who have been shifted after the landslide for safety reasons.
Nainital district disaster management officer Shailesh Kumar said boulder fall was being reported on Thandi Sadak for the past three days. “But on Tuesday morning, there was a major landslide at the same site. The district administration has decided to call experts to check the area and make recommendations from the safety point of view,” he said.
Prof Lalit Tiwari, research director at Kumaon University, said that from the safety point of view, the students from the hostel have been shifted to another hostel. “We will discuss the matter with the district magistrate following which we will take a decision on when it will be safe to allow students in the hostel,” he said.
Nainital is one of the most landslide-prone areas in the state. In 1880, 151 people were killed in a major landslide in Nainital’s Sher Ka Danda area. Since 2018, the hill station and the areas around it have been witnessing landslides and cracks on the roads.
After three landslides hit Nainital in 2018, the administration had approached Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) project authorities for slope disaster mitigation on the Baliyanala mountainside in Nainital. The slope treatment done by the irrigation department didn’t work and has already been washed away in the earlier landslides in Hari Nagar area of Nainital.
After the 2018 landslides, Uttarakhand high court had constituted a committee for studying and suggesting a treatment plan for landslide-prone Baliyanala in Nainital.
The mango-shaped Nainital lake surrounded by hills is situated at an elevation of 1938 metres, with a width of 360 metres. In 1839, a British sugar trader, P Barron, stumbled upon the Himalayan lake while he was lost in the hills and was trying to find his way back.