​Himalayan tragedy: On avalanches in the Himalayan States

Earlier this week, Indian Army and Indo-Tibetan Border Police teams rescued 23 workers who were stuck in a rubble of snow and ice, following an avalanche at Mana village, Uttarakhand. Eight workers died in the disaster, which occurred at a Border Roads Organisation construction site that had housed 54 labourers in eight containers. To say that the rescue operation was arduous would be an understatement. The rescue teams worked in a near-continuous 60-hour shift amidst heavy snowfall at an elevation of 10,500 feet above mean sea level. With the roads blocked by the snow, helicopters were used to evacuate those rescued to the Joshimath Army Hospital — five helicopters from the Indian Army, two from the Indian Air Force and one civilian copter. Along with the sheer physical effort expended in the extraction, the rescue operation employed a drone-based detection system to detect the containers that were buried under several feet of snow, ice and rock.

Avalanches in the Himalayan States, like the one in Mana, which is among the last outposts in Indian territory and close to the border with China, are not uncommon. Villagers here have historically been ‘winter-migrants’, which means that during the winter months the village is deserted. Coinciding with the ritual closing of the Badrinath temple in November, there is migration to villages lower down, such as Gopeshwar and Jyotirmath, for the winter, with residents returning only when the temple reopens in April or May. This is part of traditional wisdom and has a lot to do with the historical experience of the upper Himalayan stretches being prone to disasters. While these practices may have saved the resident villagers, it still raises the question as to whether the workers — several of them migrants — were adequately aware of the risks of their enterprise. Given the strategic location of the village and the need to develop improved roads for civilian and military access, there will always be a sizeable number of people engaged in activity in regions that are inherently inhospitable and risk-prone. Once disaster strikes, efforts focus on the rescue operation, and once they conclude, there is little reflection on whether preventive measures could have been taken. Avalanches cannot be predicted with precision, but steps can be taken to design containers that are safer to live in and can improve the odds of survival. There is much to learn from the way bomb shelters are imagined or how research stations at Antarctica are designed. All of this requires a greater sensitivity to workers who toil amidst hazards and not merely label these tragedies as inevitable consequences of natural disasters.