NEW DELHI – Long before the floods arrived, taking hundreds of people and destroying newly built dams and bridges, the warning signs were clear.
The Himalayas have been warming at an alarming rate for years, melting ice long trapped in glaciers, soil and rocks, increasing the risk of floods and devastating landslides, scientists warned. Neighboring populations were vulnerable, they said, and the region’s ecosystem has become very fragile for major development projects.
But the Indian government ignored experts’ objections and protests by local residents to blow up rocks and build hydroelectric power projects in volatile areas like the northern Uttarakhand state, where the disaster occurred.
Authorities said on Monday that the bodies of 26 victims were recovered during the search for nearly 200 missing people. On Sunday, a wave of water and debris roared down the steep mountain valleys of the Rishiganga River, erasing everything in its path. Most of the victims were workers on energy projects.
Residents said the authorities overseeing the expensive development projects did not prepare them for what was to come, giving them a false sense of confidence that nothing was going to happen.
“There was no program or training in the village on disaster management by the government,” said Bhawan Singh Rana, head of the Raini village, hit by some of the worst damage. “Our village is on a rock and we fear that it may slide at any moment.”
Security forces concentrated on a tunnel where they said 30 people were being held. Food was thrown at about 13 villages where roads were cut, with some 2,500 people arrested.
The devastation of the Uttarakhand floods once again drew attention to the fragile ecosystem in the Himalayas, where millions of people are feeling the impact of global warming. The World Bank warned that climate change could dramatically decrease living conditions for up to 800 million people in South Asia. But the effects are already being felt, often in deadly ways, in much of the Himalayan belt, from Bhutan to Afghanistan.
The region has about 15,000 glaciers, which are retreating at a rate of 30 to 60 meters per decade. The melt feeds or creates thousands of glacial lakes that can suddenly break through the ice and the rocky debris that trap them, causing catastrophic flooding. In Nepal, Bhutan, India and Pakistan, a large number of glacial lakes were considered to be imminently dangerous by the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development, an intergovernmental group.
Nepal has been particularly vulnerable, with climate change forcing entire villages to migrate to lower ground to survive a deepening water crisis. Flash floods, some caused by the overflow of glacial lakes, have also become more frequent.
Scientists have repeatedly warned that development projects in the region are a deadly gamble, potentially making things worse.
Ravi Chopra, the director of the People’s Institute of Science in Uttarakhand, said that a 2012 group of experts appointed by the government recommended that dams should not be built in the Alaknanda-Bhagirathi basin, including Rishiganga. He was on a scientific committee appointed by India’s highest court in 2014, which also advised against building dams in the “para-glacial zone”, which he described as an area where the valley floor is more than 7,000 feet above sea level.
“But the government went ahead and decided to build them,” he said. The two hydroelectric projects hit by Sunday’s flood – one destroyed and the other seriously damaged – were built in that area, he said.
DP Dobhal, a former scientist at the Wadia Institute of Geology of the Himalayas, said: “When we develop such projects in the Himalayas, such as hydroelectric projects or roads and railways, in detailed design reports, data from the glacier study is never taken into account or included. “
The government is building more than 500 miles of highway in Uttarkhand to improve access to several of the main Hindu temples, despite environmentalists’ objections to clearing the forest, which can accelerate erosion and increase the risk of landslides.
A scientific committee appointed by the Supreme Court of India and led by Dr. Chopra concluded last year that the government, in building the 10-meter, 33-foot-wide highway, was against the advice of its own experts from the Ministry of Transport. The government argued that a wider road brought more economic dividends and was necessary for the possible development of large-scale military equipment on the disputed border with China.
The Supreme Court sided with a faction of the scientific committee and determined that the road should be limited to 5.5 meters, or about 18 feet. But by that time, hundreds of acres of forest and tens of thousands of trees had already been cut, said a report in Indian media The Scroll.
“When you have experts from your own ministry saying that the roads in the Himalayan region should not have a paved surface of more than 5.5 meters, and then go against the recommendations of your own experts, then this is a serious matter,” said Chopra. “Unless the courts examine the issue of sanctioning authorities and personally responsible executing authorities, I don’t think the situation is going to change.”
Trivendra Singh Rawat, Uttarakhand’s chief minister, warned against seeing the flood as “a reason to build an anti-development narrative”.
“I reiterate our government’s commitment to develop the Uttarakhand hills in a sustainable manner and we will not leave any stone unturned to guarantee the achievement of this goal”, Mr. Rawat said on Twitter.
Exactly what caused the last flood was not clear on Monday night, with the Indian government saying that a team of experts would visit the site to investigate. Ranjeet Rath, head of India’s geological survey, said initial information suggested “glacial birth at the highest altitudes”. Childbirth is the breaking of pieces of ice from the edge of a glacier.
Scientists studying satellite images before and after the flood said it was probably not caused by a glacial lake bursting, as no such lake was visible in the images.
They said the disaster probably started with the collapse of a rocky slope that became unstable with the melting of ice in the last summers, and such a landslide could have broken part of a glacier.
An avalanche could have dammed the river temporarily, creating a lake that then broke free, said Umesh K. Haritashya, a scientist who studies glacial hazards at Dayton University in Ohio.
Avalanches also generate frictional heat, which can melt ice that is in its path or in debris.
“Basically, it is a landslide formed by a fraction of rock and another fraction of ice,” said Dan Shugar, a geomorphologist at the University of Calgary in Alberta. “A lot of ice has melted. And you may have picked up a lot more. “
Raini village was in one of the hardest hit areas on Sunday, where the 13-megawatt Rishiganga hydroelectric project was completely destroyed. After that, about 100 of the village’s 150 residents spent the night outdoors.
“We do not sleep in our homes for fear that more water will come, the rocks may move, something more dangerous may happen,” said Rana, the village chief. “We took our bedding out into the forest, lit some fires and somehow spent the night.”
The area was the scene of a well-known environmental protest against deforestation in the 1970s. Protesters, many of them women, hugged the trees to prevent loggers from cutting them down, in a movement that became known as “chipko”, or hugging.
Rana said local residents also protested the construction of the Rishiganga energy project, which started generating electricity last year, and they even filed lawsuits, but to no avail. They feared that the explosion of stones would cause deadly landslides.
“We used to hear explosions and see rocks moving,” he said. “When this project was under construction, half of our village collapsed. We asked to be transferred from here to another place. The government said they would do that, but it never happened. “
Bhadra Sharma contributed reporting from Kathmandu, Nepal, and Henry Fountain from Albuquerque.