Chilling moment flash flood wipes out town leaving least 4 dead and 50 missing

At least four people have been killed and over 50 others are feared missing after flash floods struck several homes and shops in northern India. Localtelevision channels showed flood waters surging down a mountain and crashing into Dharali, a Himalayan mountain village in the Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand state.

The flood waters surged into homes, destroyed a local market and swept away roads. Around “a dozen” hotels were washed away and several shops collapsed, according to administrative officer Prahsant Arya. Rescuers, police and the Indian army hae all been deployed to search for missing people.

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said rescue agencies were working “ona war footing”. “We are doing everything possible to save lives and provide relief,” he said in a statement. It comes after a girl, 3, was found dead on beach by a horrified passer-by.

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India’s National Disaster Management Authoritysaid it had requested three helicopters from the federal government to assist in the rescue and relief operations as rescuers struggled to access the remote terrain. Officials have not provided a figure for those trapped or missing.

India’s weather agency has forecast more heavy rains in the region in the coming days. Authorities have asked schools to remain closed in several districts, including Dehradun and Haridwar cities.

Sudden, intense downpours over small areas known as cloudbursts are increasingly common in Uttarakhand, a Himalayan region prone to flash floods and landslides during the monsoon season. Cloudbursts have the potential to wreak havoc by causing intense flooding and landslides, impacting thousands of people in the mountainous regions.

Experts say cloudbursts have increased in recent years partly due to climate change, while damage from the storms also has increased because of unplanned development in mountain regions.

Over 6,000 people died and 4,500 villages were affected when a similar cloudburst devastated Uttarakhand state in 2013. The flooding in northern India is the latest in a series of disasters that have battered the Himalayan mountains, which span across five countries, in the last few months.

Flooding and landslides as a result of heavy rains and glaciers melting due to high temperatures have killed over 300 people in Pakistan, reported the country’s disaster agency. In 2024 alone, there were 167 disasters in Asia, including storms, floods, heat waves and earthquakes, which was the most of any continent, according to the Emergency Events Database maintained by the University of Louvain, Belgium. These led to losses of the equivalent of over £24 billion, the researchers found.

A 2023 report by Nepal-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development found that glaciers are melting at unprecedented rates across the Hindu Kush and Himalayan Mountain ranges. The study found that at least 200 of the more than 2,000 glacial lakes in the region are at risk of overflowing, which can cause catastrophic damage downstream.