Ten years of Kedarnath tragedy: Lessons not learnt and challenges ahead

In June 2013, a midday cloudburst in the upper reaches of the Himalayas in Uttarakhand led to flash floods that claimed over 6,000 lives and swept away several settlements, including the one around the Kedarnath shrine, during the height of the pilgrimage season in what has been described as the worst natural disaster the state has ever witnessed.

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Ten years later, the Himalayan state remains extremely vulnerable to disasters exacerbated by unsustainable development. As lessons from the Kedranath tragedy went largely unheeded, the number of pilgrims to the Char Dham Hindu shrines have since increased beyond the carrying capacity of the valleys, experts said.

This year, over a million pilgrims have already visited Kedarnath till the end of June, with about another three months still remaining for the annual pilgrimage. Last year, that number was touched in August.

In 2014, an expert panel constituted by the Supreme Court suggested that authorities should limit the number of pilgrims visiting the four shrines. No more than 5,000 people should be allowed per day in Kedarnath, 6,000 in Badrinath, 3,500 in Yamunotri and around 4,000 in Gangotri, it said.

Prodded by the committee, the Uttarakhand government did impose a daily limit to the four shrines, which are open to pilgrims typically from end April or May to September every year, only to revoke it on April 21 on the eve of the start of the pilgrimage. It had earlier said the daily cap for pilgrims to Yamunotri would be 500, Gangotri 9,000, Badrinath 15,000 and Kedarnath 18,000.

Lessons from the Kedarnath disaster entailed a need for a sustainable and decentralized model of tourism based on the ecological carrying capacity of the fragile Himalayan ecology, said Hemant Dhyani, a noted environmentalist and member of the Supreme Court-appointed panel. “Instead of assessing this, a rampant increase in pilgrim influx is overburdening fragile Himalayan valleys,” Dhyani said.

Need for sustainable development

It is not just the number of pilgrims that are a problem, Dhyani said. Numerous experts opined that the higher Himalayas should be kept free from hydropower interventions, he said. “Despite this, nothing was implemented and, as a result, we witnessed the aggravation of the 2021 Rishi Ganga flood and sinking of the Joshimath area,” Dhyani said.

In February 2021, a glacial burst on Rishi Ganga in Chamoli district claimed 204 lives and nearly swept away parts of a hydropower project being built on the river. In January this year, dangerous cracks developed in several building in Joshimath, the gateway town to the Badrinath shrine, which led the evacuation of several hundreds of residents to safer locations. Many of them are still living in relief camps.

The mountains need a sustainable model of infrastructure development, Dhyani and other experts said.

“Instead of a disaster and climate- resilient approach for infrastructure projects, the Char Dham railways, urbanization and various roads projects are being taken up without keeping in mind the fragility and sensitivity of the Himalayas,” Dhyani said. “Such unsustainable and irresponsible approach is in fact making our Himalayan region more vulnerable to disasters like cloudbursts, flashfloods and landslides.”

In 2014, soon after the Kedarnath tragedy, an expert body set up by the Supreme Court has said hydropower projects should not be built in disaster-prone valleys north of the main central thrust (MCT) line, but the recommendations were not adopted. The hydropower project on the Rishi Ganga and Dhauliganga is located north of the MCT, which is highly prone to landslides, flashfloods and earthquakes. An interministerial group had also recommended in 2014 that such areas should be left pristine.

Rampant and unabated constructions are being undertaken against the opinion of scientists, geologists and experts in Uttarakhand, due to which the precariousness of disaster situations is increasing rapidly, said Anoop Nautiyal, a Dehradun-based social activist.

“Environmental concerns are consistently getting brushed aside in lieu of development plans. The crowds coming to the Himalayas, including Kedarnath, are only increasing. There is a mad scramble to set new pilgrim arrival records,” Nautiyal said. “If the tourism influx and construction are not curbed and not managed properly, a tragedy like 2013 can happen again in Uttarakhand.”

More than 400 villages displaced due to development are awaiting rehabilitation in the state since the government has not managed to resettle them in new locations, Nautiyal claimed. “Landslides, avalanches, earthquakes, land subsidence, and extreme rainfall events are all increasing in intensity across the state. Uttarakhand needs to seriously plan and take care of its carrying capacity,” he said.

“The government should listen to experts and involve them in the policymaking process,” Nautiyal said. “Sustainable and regulated development with concern for future generations is the model that needs to be adopted and implemented.”

Improving forecasts to prevent disasters

The authorities have also been found lacking in putting in place systems that would predict weather phenomenon quickly so that the human cost of disaster can be prevented.

A year after the 2013 tragedy, the then chief secretary Subhash Kumar had held talks with the Indian Meteorological Department for sett up Doppler radars in the state under the Union earth sciences ministry’s Integrated Himalayan Meteorology programme.

It was aimed at improving weather forecast services in the Himalayan states and help in reducing human losses due to extreme weather events. Later, activist Ajay Gautam filed a public interest litigation in 2014, urging the Delhi high court to issue directives to the state government to establish advanced warning systems and Doppler radars.

“Doppler radars help in providing extreme weather data in real-time and help officials in getting warning about storms in any region within two to three hours in advance. The severity of the weather systems can thus be quantitatively estimated more accurately and more precise advance warnings can be generated for saving human lives and property,” Gautam said.

Also read: 8 CRPF personnel on way to Amarnath yatra injured in road accident

Despite the lawsuit and the court’s repeated directions, there were delaying in deploying the radars, Gautam said. Two Doppler radars were set up in the past three years, while the third one is yet to be installed. “Had they been set up early, it would have helped the authorities in the state a lot,” he added.

Two Doppler radars have been installed, one at Mukteshwar in Nainital district in 2021, and another at Surkanda in Tehri Garhwal district in 2022, according to Bikram Singh, director of the weather office’s Dehradun centre. “The third radar will be set up at Lansdowne within the next two to three months,” he said.

The rapidly increasing number of pilgrims during the char dham yatra is a worrying sigh, said geologist Y P Sudriyal, adjunct Professor at HNB Garhwal University. “If it is not managed properly, a tragedy like 2013 can happen again,” he said.

“After the 2013 disaster, we conducted a survey and found that the Kedar valley had a capacity for only 25,000 pilgrims to stay, but that night, there were 40,000 people there. Now this balance has deteriorated further. The road, which was earlier branded as all weather, has now been branded as Char Dham Marg project,” Sudriyal said.

Even 10 years after the Kedarnath tragedy, there are no early warning systems in the higher Himalayan valleys that can alert people downstream to vacate the river areas in case of calamitous events like glacial lake bursts or flashfloods due to landslides. The state government earlier this year said siren systems will be installed at 250 places under the Uttarakhand Multi-Hazard Early Warning System to check losses due to disasters.

Effect of climate change

The climate emergency will only increase the vulnerability to extreme weather events in the Himalayas, experts said. Himalayan glaciers are retreating due to global warming, triggering a host of related phenomenon that require close study. However, there are only around 10 or so glaciers being monitored among over 1,000 glaciers found in Uttarakhand, which include Gangotri, Chorabari , Dunagiri , Dokriyani and Pindari glaciers.

One major reason is the location of these glaciers in remote areas and the lack of enough funding for their regular monitoring, which requires the setting of observatories, sensors and other equipment in the valleys downstream, apart from regular ground surveys.

Besides the climate change factor, it is local factors that are precipitating human losses in extreme weather events, said Anil Joshi, founder of Himalayan Environmental Studies and Conservation Organization, a Dehradun-based non-profit.

“Climate change and temperature will further aggravate the situation in the Himalayan state with regard to extreme rainfall events and flash floods. We need to have an effective strategy to deal with Kedarnath-like tragedies in the light of climate change, so that human losses can be checked and minimised,” Joshi said.

“In the last two decades, the bearing capacity of many mountains and Himalayan regions in the state has been exhausted,” he said. “People are working and settling in vulnerable areas, which has to stop.”

There are multiple policy dimensions to the unfolding situation in the state, according to Piyoosh Rautela, executive director of the Uttarakhand State Disaster Management Authority.

“Many things have been done in the past 10 years. We have strengthened our system to deal with disasters. Early warning systems have been set up in Dhauli Ganga and Tehri Dam and more will be set up in the coming time,” Rautela said. “But ultimately, it is people who have to be aware and show sensitivity when it comes to creating concrete structures in fragile areas.”