Flash floods kill at least 46 and leave dozens missing in Kashmir

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00:00At least 37 people have died after heavy flooding in Indian-administered Kashmir.

00:04Local authorities say at least 200 others are still missing.

00:08Floods were triggered by a cloudburst.

00:10Rescue teams are expected to face difficulties reaching the affected areas after roads

00:15connecting it to the main city had already suffered damage following days of heavy storms.

00:22For more on this story, we can go across to correspondent Navadita Kumari,

00:25stunning by in New Delhi.

00:27Navadita, good evening.

00:28What's the latest where you are?

00:30Good evening.

00:33Yeah, absolutely devastating images are coming in from Chashoti village in Kishtava district

00:38in northern state of Jammu and Kashmir.

00:41We have seen that rescue and search operations are going on with teams from the Army, Air Force

00:48and National Disaster Response Forces being at the site.

00:53And we know that there has been, as you just mentioned, raining incessantly.

00:59And to make things worse, the meteorological department has issued yellow alert in the area in the next 24 hours.

01:07So it's going to further complicate and make things very challenging for the rescue teams.

01:13Local reports say that many of the injured who have been rescued and injured are in critical condition.

01:22And there are reports that there were at least 500 people in the area.

01:27It's a densely populated area and at least four villages have been impacted.

01:33And many houses and vehicles have also been damaged in this incident.

01:38And we know that this comes during a pilgrimage season.

01:44There is a Hindu shrine near Chashoti village and many of the people were headed to that shrine when this calamity hit.

01:51So for now, the true scale of the devastation from this cloudburst will only be clear in the coming days.

01:58But for now, what is sure is that there is a strong fear that the death toll will further climb.

02:05Navadita, these floods in Kashmir come just 10 days after floods, also in the Himalayas, this time in the state of Uttarakhand.

02:15We are seeing more and more of these kinds of disasters.

02:19Is this all down to climate change?

02:23Well, according to environmentalists who have been studying the Indian Himalayas for decades,

02:29they say, of course, the rising temperatures due to global warming and fast melting glaciers have contributed to frequent landslides and floods.

02:40But what for them is warning is the large scale infrastructure projects going on in the Himalayan region.

02:49Remember, the Himalayas are still young, evolving and geologically active.

02:54There are frequent earthquakes in the Himalayan region.

02:57So in this unstable mountainous region, when there are large scale projects like the railways,

03:03railways which involve 50 kilometers of tunneling or 100 kilometers of tunneling,

03:08it further destabilizes the region.

03:11And also if there are wide roads like we saw in Uttarakhand.

03:15So for environmentalists, these are worrying signs.

03:19They say there can be infrastructure development.

03:23It should be done in a scientific way.

03:26There should be a scientific way of tunneling.

03:29And because we have seen the authorities use dynamites, for example, in an altitude above 3,000 meters,

03:37which for them is absolutely disastrous.

03:40So when also when these infrastructure development projects are happening, what they do,

03:46they take out the debris from these tunnels or whatever, and they dump them in the rivers.

03:50So when floods, water comes, the rivers have no way to flow.

03:55And this creates cascading effect, which wipes out villages.

03:59What we saw in 2021 in Chamoli, where 200 peoples were killed because of a sudden flash flood.

04:08And also remember in 2023, the town of Joshimat in Uttarakhand, it started sinking.

04:13And the environmentalists pointed out, look, there are so many hydropower projects and other development projects,

04:21which is leading to this disastrous effect.

04:25There were over 800 houses which developed deep cracks.

04:30And the whole town just started sinking.

04:32And the town was declared a disaster zone.

04:34So for the environmentalists and experts who know the Himalayas, they really want that any infrastructure development,

04:43it should be done in a way that respects the geography and the fragile ecosystem of the Himalayas.

04:50It's really worrying.

04:51So many of these is quite a man-made disaster.

04:55And not just because of climate change or global warming.

05:00Navadita, thank you very much for that Navadita Kumari reporting.

05:04Definitely, really.

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