Uttarakhand: What caused the disaster

More than 70,000 pilgrims have been stranded even as the Army and Air Force try to rescue them in a hostile terrain.

Torrential and unrelenting downpour, landslides and floods saw the raging waters sweep away more than 180 people and hundreds of livestock to death. More than 70,000 pilgrims have been stranded even as the Army and Air Force try to rescue them in a hostile terrain.

Of all the affected areas, Kedarnath was the worst hit. Apparently, the major cause of the unprecedented devastation was the crumbling of the Kedar Dome, a glacier-like body of  rock and ice. This breaking of this enormous ‘glacier’ following the cloudburst and the eventual landslides caused a major rupture in the Charbari Lake that is situated just over 5 km from the holy temple of Kedarnath, situated at an altitude of 3600 mt.

Kedarnath temple, dedicated to Lord Shiva and situated near the Mandakini River in a valley of the Garhwal Himalayas, was constructed in the 8th century and folklore has it that Adi Shankaracharyaoversaw the building of the shrine.

Extreme rains have wreaked havoc in the region, with the tenuousness of the Himalayan soil stability resulting in killer landslides. But environmentalists, like the CSE’s Sunita Narain, claim that man-made factors have added to the tragedy. The widespread and almost unregulated expansion of giant hyder-electric projects in the region, the incessant construction of roads to serve the burgeoning tourist population, and the adverse effect on the fragile ecosystem in the region due to growing human presence and pollution are the major causes for the devastation that Uttarakhand has been subjected to.

However, according to eyewitnesses huge rocks broke away from Kedar Dome after the flash floods caused by the cloudburst. These rocks, however, got stuck some distance away from the Kedarnath temple, possibly saving the holy shrine’s main structure from being demolished.