NEW DELHI: At least fourteen people were killed and 102 are missing after heavy rains caused a Himalayan glacial lake in northeast India to burst its banks, and rescue operations were being hampered by fast flowing rivers and washed-out bridges, said authorities on Thursday.
The Lhonak lake in Sikkim state burst its banks on Wednesday causing huge flooding, which officials said had impacted the lives of 22,000 people. It is the latest deadly weather event in India’s mountains being blamed on climate change.
A defense spokesperson said that the search operations are being undertaken under conditions of continous rains, fast-flowing water in Teesta River, bridges and roads washed away at many places.
As of early Thursday, the state disaster management agency said that twenty-six people were wounded and 102 were missing, twenty-two of which were army personnel. 11 bridges had been washed away.
Satellite imagery showed that about two-third of the lake seems to have been drained.
The weather department warned of disruption to flights and landslides as more rain is likely over the next two days in parts of Sikkim and neighboring states. Sikkim was cut off from Siliguri in West Bengal as the main highway had collapsed.
A cloudburst dropped a huge amount of rain over a short span of time on the Lhonak glacial lake on Wednesday, causing flash floods down the Teesta valley, nearly 150 km (93 miles) north of Gangtok close to the border with China.
A report by India’s national disaster management agency in 2020 said that glacial lakes are growing and pose a potentially large danger to downstream infrastructure and life as the glaciers in Himalayas are in a retreating phase because of climate change.
Nepal-based International Center for Integrated Mountain Development’s Director General Pema Gyamtsho said that sadly, this is the latest in a series of deadly floods that ricocheted in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region this monsoon, bringing the reality of the area’s extreme vulnerability to climate change all too vividly alive.
Mountanous areas of India, neighboring countries hit by torrential rains
Other mountainous areas of India, and parts of neighboring Pakistan and Nepal have been hit by torrential rains, landslides, and flooding in recent months, killing scores of people.
