Vulnerable zone bears brunt of disasters

Close to 5,600 people have died in flash floods mainly caused by extreme rainfall events, cloudbursts and glacial lake overflows mostly in five districts of Uttarakhand since 1970, Uttarakhand State Disaster Management Authority (USDMA) data shows.

- Chetan Chauhan

This includes 4,127 people who died in the devastating June 2013 Kedarnath flash flood.

On Tuesday, at least four people died and several others were reported missing in Dharali village of Uttarkashi district around 200 km north of state capital Dehradun because of sudden heavy gush of water in the Kheer Ganga river at about 1 pm with tonnes of debris, bringing down several multi-storey houses at confluence of the river with Bhagirathi.

The incident is not in isolation.

Uttarkashi falls in the central Himalayan region that has witnessed frequent extreme rainfall events. Studies by USDMA showed that districts of Uttarkashi, Chamoli, Rudraprayag, Bageshwar and Pithoragarh are highly vulnerable to the impact of cloudbursts or extreme rainfall, whose intensity is increasing with temperature in the Himalayan region rising, as they fall in the high seismic Main Central Thrust (MCT) zone that has witnessed frequent earthquakes in recent years.

According to the National Centre for Seismology, Uttarakhand recorded 17 earthquakes since January 2025, of which 14 were in the MCT that covers Uttarkashi, Rudrprayag, Bagheshwar and Chamoli districts, Uttarkashi is in seismic zone IV and other three districts fall in zone V.