Landslide buries several vehicles in Shimla

Eight vehicles were buried while three houses and a temple were damaged in a massive landslide triggered by heavy rains near Sanjauli  area in the suburbs of Shimla, officials said.

No loss of life was reported in the incident, they said, adding that fifteen families were shifted to safer places as several houses on a hill top were endangered.

Due to the landslide, the Dhalli-Shoghi road was blocked and hundreds of trucks loaded with apples and headed to the Bhattakufar Subzi Mandi, 3 km from the spot, were stranded.

Within a few minutes of the massive landslide in the cemetery area of Sanjauli near Shimla,  local government officials and National Disaster Management Authority officials rushed to the spot.

Residents of Sanjauli and adjacent areas of Dhali and Bhattakuffar are not surprised though. In fact, the general feeling was that a much large-scale disaster is still awaiting to happen. The haphazard construction on this ‘soft hilly area’ is man-made recipe for disaster, they claim.

It’s just not the result  of a day or a year or a decade. In fact, this entire hill started turning into a concrete jungle in the early 80s. With this area out of local municipal corporation limit, it was easy for anyone to just construct without getting any permission or getting design approval. Within the next decade (till 1995), there was hardly an inch left in the area.

And the particular area which witnessed the massive landslide on Saturday is currently been ‘cut and bruised to widen this ambitious bypass road project’. The temple, Shivshakti, which took all the brunt is one such example of unauthorised and illegal construction. Had this been on the other side of this hill, the casualties could well be in thousands.

“Shimla is like a pack of cards that could come crashing down any time,” says a resident Gurmeet Singh. The 49-year-old is also in the construction business and understand how vulnerable this area has become because of an absence of planning.

“More than 90 per cent of the buildings within the municipal limits of Shimla infringe both bylaws and building codes,” says a local town-planner who doesn’t want to be quoted here.