Uttarakhand: What caused the disaster

New Delhi: calamities and pilgrim hotspots seems to be inextricably linked. Until Vis trying to wobble out of the worst disaster ever to hit the region, with hundreds of deaths and thousands of other already missing, and a heated debate broke out about the actual reason why the Prime Minister office dubbed the "Himalayan tsunami."


While the administration insists that it was a natural disaster, and conservationists believe that this was a man-made disaster waiting to happen.

Heavy rains and unrelenting, landslides and floods saw the raging waters sweep away more than 180 people and hundreds of livestock to death. The stranded more than 70,000 pilgrims until the army and air force in an attempt to save them in a hostile land.

From all the affected areas, Kedarnath was hardest hit. Apparently, it was a major cause of destruction unprecedented and crumbling of the Dome of Kedar, like an icy body of rock and ice. This caused a huge break this "ice" in the wake of the storm and landslides in the end of a serious rupture in Lake Charbari, which is located just 5 km from the sacred temple of Kedarnath, and lies at an altitude of 3,600 metric tons.

Temple was built Kedarnath, dedicated to Shiva, located near the Mandakini River Valley in the Garhwal Himalayas, in the 8th century and folklore has that Adi Shankaracharya supervised the construction of the mausoleum.

The extreme rain wreaked havoc in the region, with the fragility of the stability of the soil in the Himalayas which led to deadly landslides. But environmentalists, such as the CSE Sunita Narain, the claim that man-made factors have added to the tragedy. Expansion of large-scale, unregulated almost projects Haider electrical giant in the region, and building a continuous ways to serve the population tourism is booming, and the negative impact on the fragile ecosystem in the region because of the presence of human growing and pollution are the main reasons for the office of the destruction subjected to.

However, according to eyewitnesses huge rocks away from Kedar Dome after flooding caused by the storm. These rocks, however, got stuck some distance away from the temple of Kedarnath, perhaps saving the main structure of the Holy Shrine of being demolished.


Rock and raging water frothed and miles of mud from the region that have been washed from the river almost every Kedarnath submerged, killing a lot of people.

Reports said that the temple courtyard has been washed away and the Nandi, Shiva mountain at the entrance to the temple, and also buried under more than 6 feet of mud and rocks, like most Kedarnath. However, it survived the attack of mudslides.

Even the road from Gaurikund to Kedarnath stretch 14 kilometers has been completely submerged, making it impossible to enter or exit. This is what led to the pilgrims being stranded. Even Bada Ramallah, between Gaurikund and Kedarnath, is completely invisible from the rescue helicopters.

So while the two sides - on the environment and the government - the quarrel about the root causes of the disaster, thousands of lives hanging by a thread thin.