Uttarkashi flash floods: Can we prevent the next tragedy?

On August 5 in Dharali, a Himalayan village near the Gangotri pilgrimage route, steady rain was followed by the ballooning of a river that destroyed homes and futures. It wasn’t the first such disaster in this region. It began with regular monsoon rain tapping on roofs, creating thin streams down the hillsides. Hours later, a wall of water, rock and mud tore through Dharali. Nestled in Uttarakhand’s upper reaches near Gangotri, Dharali lies close to a sacred source of the Ganga River. But on that day, the river smashed into homes, ripped apart roads and swept away everything in its path. Families fled with nothing. Lives were lost.The Himalayas are young mountains that shift, crack and shed rock. But our choices make them more dangerous: carving roads into fragile slopes, building too close to rivers and the warming the climate.

In this episode, a scientist explains the forces shaping the mountains, and an environmentalist shows how our actions magnify the risk. Together, they trace the path from an ordinary day’s rain to a disaster and reveal how to stop the next tragedy before it strikes.

Host: Anupama Chandrasekaran

Produced by Sharmada venkatasubramanian

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