From Kedarnath to Dharali: Uttarakhand's unheeded warnings and rising disasters

New Delhi: The death and destruction left behind by the flash floods in the Kheer Ganga river in Dharali resurrected painful memories for Geeta, a survivor of the 2013 Kedarnath disaster, who lost four family members in that tragedy, India's worst since the 2004 tsunami.

"The same thing happened in Kedarnath," she exclaimed as visuals played out on a television at a house in New Delhi where she now works as a domestic help.

The 2013 disaster was triggered by more than 300 mm of rain in 24 hours as an early intense monsoon surge interacted with a western disturbance. The extreme rainfall, combined with rapid snowmelt, breached the moraine dam of Chorabari Lake, unleashing massive floods that killed around 5,700 people.

Scarred by the tragedy, Geeta (now 45 years old) and her family migrated to Delhi to rebuild their lives. But each time a calamity hits the Himalayan state, it revives those haunting memories for her.

Over the past 12 years, a series of disasters have underscored the fragility of the Himalayan terrain.

On August 18, 2019, a cloudburst in Tikochi and Makudi villages in Uttarkashi's Arakot region triggered flash floods and landslides, killing at least 19 people and affecting 38 villages.

In February 2021, the collapse of a hanging glacier caused a debris flow in the Ronti Gad stream, a tributary of Rishiganga, sweeping away two hydropower projects in Chamoli. Eighty bodies were recovered, and 204 people went missing.

In August the next year, flash floods caused by a cloudburst in the Maldevta-Song-Baldi river system washed away large parts of the Maldevta town near Dehradun, affecting a 15 km stretch.

The Dharali disaster, experts say, shares features with the 2021 Chamoli tragedy.

"It is similar to Chamoli, and rainfall is just one factor. We need high-resolution satellite data or ground verification to know more," HNB Garhwal University Professor Y P Sundriyal said.

The 2021 Chamoli disaster impacted an area spanning 20-22 km but did not affect the Alaknanda downstream.

A study published last month in the Journal of the Geological Society of India has confirmed a sharp rise in extreme rainfall and surface runoff events in Uttarakhand after 2010.

The research, led by Professor Sundriyal, shows that while 1998-2009 saw warming and low rainfall, the trend reversed post-2010, with central and western Uttarakhand witnessing more extreme precipitation events.

"Data from 1970 to 2021 shows a clear increase in extreme rainfall events after 2010," Sundriyal told PTI.

The state's geology compounds its risk.

Steep slopes, young and fragile formations prone to erosion and tectonic faults such as the Main Central Thrust make the terrain unstable. The orographic effect of the Himalayas forces moist air upwards, leading to intense localised rainfall, while unstable slopes magnify the risk of landslides and flash floods.

A November 2023 study published in the Natural Hazards journal, analysing disaster data between 2020 and 2023, recorded 183 incidents in Uttarakhand during the monsoon months alone. Landslides accounted for 34.4 per cent of these, flash floods 26.5 per cent and cloudbursts 14 per cent.

The Centre for Science and Environment's Atlas on Weather Disasters shows that between January 2022 and March 2025, the 13 Himalayan states and Union territories reported extreme weather events on 822 days, claiming 2,863 lives.

Experts say these natural factors are worsened by human activity. Unregulated road-building, deforestation and construction of tourism infrastructure and settlements on unstable slopes or riverbanks have increased disaster risk.

Environment activist Anoop Nautiyal said repeated tragedies in Kedarnath, Chamoli, Joshimath, Sirobagad, Kwarab, and Yamunotri have not altered Uttarakhand's development trajectory.

"If anything, ecological degradation and haphazard development are accelerating due to flawed policies and projects," he claimed.

Climate campaigner Harjeet Singh described the Uttarkashi tragedy as "a deadly mix of global warming-fuelled monsoon extremes and unscientific, unsustainable construction in the name of development".

The threats are not limited to extreme rainfall and landslides. Climate change is rapidly transforming the region's glaciers, creating new hazards in the form of swelling glacial lakes.

Uttarakhand has more than 1,260 glacial lakes, with 13 identified by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) as high risk and five as extremely dangerous. These lakes pose major downstream threats, especially as warming accelerates glacial melt.

The Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology has repeatedly warned about the dangers posed by hanging glaciers and glacial lakes. After the Chamoli disaster, its scientists flagged the role of freeze-thaw cycles in destabilising glaciers.

NDMA's 2020 guidelines on Glacial Lake Outburst Floods called for mapping high-risk lakes, enforcing land-use restrictions and using remote monitoring to track potential breaches.

Similarly, a 2013 review by the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People said unregulated hydropower projects and hill-cutting had amplified risks in the fragile terrain, but its recommendations were ignored.

Despite multiple expert reports, policy and enforcement have failed to match the scale of the threat.

As Uttarakhand reels from yet another disaster, the question remains whether the warnings from scientists will finally be heeded before another tragedy strikes.