Heavy rain is battering Nainital and nearby areas in Uttarakhand, triggering fresh landslides and keeping the state administration on alert as more rain is expected this week.
Landslides have hit the villages of Pokhrad and Churigaad in Nainital’s Dhari tehsil. In Pokhrad, the landslide has put the three homes at risk.
In Churigaad, debris piled up behind a house, sending water into the home and the cowshed nearby. The landslide damaged the walls of both structures, allowing large amounts of water and debris to enter.
Once officials learned of the damage, they reached the spot and moved the affected families to safer places. No people or animals were hurt in either incident.
In a separate incident in Dhari, a landslide sent debris and a large tree crashing onto a car and a motorcycle on the road.
The Meteorological Department has issued an Orange Alert for heavy to very heavy rain in three districts of Uttarakhand on Wednesday.
Several parts of the state saw extremely heavy rain over the past 24 hours, with Nainital district recording very heavy rain in many areas. Rainfall figures include 217 mm in Nainital city, 161 mm in Bhimtal, 140 mm in Mukteshwar, 122 mm in Haldwani, 114 mm in Dhari, 105 mm in Kainchi Dham, 93.5 mm in Kushyakutoli, 92 mm in Khansyu and 80.5 mm in Betalghat.
Read: Uttarakhand Has 219 ‘Hanging Glaciers’. One-Third Of Them Are Unstable
The State Emergency Operations Centre (SEOC) and the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) said 12 people died in rain-related incidents across the state on Tuesday.
The rain in Uttarakhand comes as the Himalayan region deals with extreme weather. On 26 August, Nepal was hit by a deadly flash flood when a wall of sludge swept through villages along the Bhote Koshi river after an ice-rock formation collapsed near the Nepal-Tibet border, killing more than 1,200 people.
(With inputs from Sameer Sah)
