Indian Army pulled off an engineering marvel when they cleared the blockade of Phutkal River, which had led to formation of 15 kilometre artificial lake in the Kargil district of cold desert of Ladakh.
Indian Army pulled off an engineering marvel when they cleared the blockade of Phutkal River, which had led to formation of 15 kilometre artificial lake in the Kargil district of cold desert of Ladakh.
dna was first to report on January 18 about the major environmental disaster in the Zanaskar valley which could have led to the flooding of the nearby villages, loss of livelihood and damage to life and property.
“The area being cut off during winter months, the entire operation had to be maintained by air. 500 sorties of Army and Air Force helicopters ferried 38 tons of load over more than 300 hours, under extremely hazardous and demanding flying conditions. A camp of area 10m x15m was established on a ledge on the rock face near the landslide site”, said Colonel SD Goswami, defence spokesman at Northern Command headquarters.
On establishment of the camp, the composite task force immediately swung into action. Relentlessly working long hours, day in and day out, in temperatures lower than minus 25 degree with high wind chill, unmindful of the risk to life, a 75m long channel, two meter deep and two meter wide was created by controlled blasting using 175kg of explosive, over five days.
“An artificial channel was created through the landslide area that facilitated flow of water to the downstream side. Water finally started gushing across the landslide in an uninterrupted manner from the lake formed. The flow is currently being closely monitored,” said Col Goswami.
The crisis had started in January when a landslide caused complete blockage of water in the river, resulting in accumulation of more than 30 million cubic meters of water and forming a 15km-long lake, along the river.
Alarmed by the phenomenon, the authorities had closed the famous frozen ice Chaddar trek for the tourists and asked the people in living few villages to shift as there is greater danger of flooding.
Chaddar trek is world famous for frozen ice walk along the Zanaskar River.
The matter was immediately brought to the notice of the centre. Consequently, National Crisis Management Committee declared the situation to be a ‘national crisis’ in first week of February and constituted an expert committee under the aegis of NDMA, to carry out technical assessment of the situation and prepare an action plan for execution, to avert any crisis”, he said.
Col Goswami noted that given the urgency, risk involved, the Indian army was called to lead and coordinate activities for execution of the plan.
Meanwhile, the rains have created fresh fears of floods in Kashmir even as the government drew a contingency plan to evacuate the people from the vulnerable areas in Srinagar in case of exigency. Several shelter camps have been established and nodal officers pressed into service to help the people during emergency.
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