LUCKNOW, India (CU)_Nine more bodies were pulled out from the site of the flash flood in a Himalayan region of northern India on Sunday (Feb 14), bringing the death toll to 50, while more than 150 people still missing.
A week ago, a torrent of water, triggered by a large avalanche of glacier ice, set down the mountain gorge, crashing through dams and bridges. Most of those missing are believed to be workers from two hydro power plants in the area, which were damaged by incident.
“We have not lost all hope yet. We hope to find more survivors,” Swati Bhadoriya, the top government official in the region, said.
Meanwhile, experts have warned that rescue efforts have become risky, since there could still be huge amounts of rock, debris, ice and water that could be dislodged.
Uttarakhand, in the western Himalayas, is prone to flash floods and landslides, with around 6,000 people believed to have been killed in June 2013, in the floods which were triggered by the heaviest monsoon rains in decades.
A team of scientists are investigating the recent incident believe a piece of a Himalayan glacier, which was wrapped around and hanging on a slope, weakened over a period of time due to freezing and melting. This chunk of ice, being held up by a mass of rock, broke off and hurtled down a steep mountain slope, they say.
A glacier is a slowly flowing river of ice, accumulating snow, rock, sediment and often liquid water. There are about 10,000 of them in the Indian Himalayas, with nearly 1,500 glaciers in Uttarakhand itself, and many are receding due to the warming climate.
