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| Weather
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| Villagers leave homes fearing more |
| Uttarakhand floods: Villagers leave homes fearing more landslides
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| INDIA
, 8-July-2013
4:20:15 AM |
| It's almost five in the evening and most of the houses in Dhasra village in Uttarkashi have locks on their doors. The reason: hapless villagers, fearing there could be more landslides like the ones that devastated Uttarakhand last month, have left their homes in search of safer grounds.
Located at over 7000 feet, Dhasra village was spared the physical devastation the other parts of the state suffered. But the mental trauma of the flash floods in their state, that killed more than 1000 people and displaced thousands, has shattered their peace.
Last year's rainfall loosened rock and soil just above the village. After this year's heavy downpour, villagers feel there is a landslide waiting to happen. So every night, they trek two kilometres to higher ground.
For the past two years, the villagers said they have noticed the fissures getting bigger on the land above their village. Various appeals to the government to relocate the village have been ignored so far.
NDTV came across 80-year-old Indri Devi while she made her arduous climb to the top of the mountain. She said she's not going to come back in the morning and will stay there for at least four days. Unlike many of her co-climbers, the frail woman cannot manage the steep climb every day.
After about two hours of trekking in the rain, Indri Devi and others reach a relatively flat patch on top of the mountains scattered with make-shift huts and tents put together in a hurry by the villagers of Dhasra. The huts, which the villagers share with their cattle, barely keep the rains out.
Dhasra, like several other remote villages across Uttarakhand, is accessible only by a steep trek up the mountains, The nearest road is 8 km away and even that was washed away two weeks ago. Now as rations run low, most families are surviving by eating their potato crop.
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