Uttarakhand glacier burst: ‘We helplessly watched our loved ones washed away’

A roar, a haze, a split second of stunned silence. And then, chaos.
It was an exceptionally bright Sunday morning when Mahatami Devi, 42, stepped out of her house in Uttarakhand’s Jugju village to fetch firewood and cattle fodder from the neighbouring Raini village. One of her three sons, 17-year-old Ankit, was home at the time. “I met her around 8am. I was going uphill with three men to carve a pagdandi (pathway) in Raini. She was headed downhill. She said a quick hello and moved ahead,” Sangram Singh Rawat, former gram panchayat member of Raini village, told TOI.
“An hour later, there was a loud, thundering sound. When we looked up, the clear blue sky had turned grey. And then, we heard Ankit screaming, ‘Save my mother.’ A wall of water came surging through the hills, sweeping with it everything that came in its way — people, cattle, trees. We could do nothing.”

Metres away, Anita Devi, 70, from Raini Chuksa village was grazing cattle when the debris-laden Dhauliganga raged through Raini. “She was with her grandson Golu and daughter-in-law Tanuja. The two of them ran for their lives when they heard the sound. Anita Devi was left behind. We saw the river swallow her as she stood there, helpless,” said Kundan Singh, 42, from Raini.
While those in the higher reaches saw their loved ones swept away, those downhill darted in panic. “Bhaago (run),” people were screaming. But they could not keep going. “The air was thick, pungent. They could not breathe, could not run faster. They just buckled down and waited,” Sangram said.

After about half an hour, the village elders in Raini said they should go looking for those who were missing. “What we saw was horrifying. Where we had seen people working hours ago — cutting wood, grazing cattle — there was a swamp of debris. Not one of our people could be spotted,”Sangram said. Kundan’s nephew is among them. “He had taken around 150 goats for grazing. He has gone missing,” Kundan said. With villages in the area cut off because bridges have been swept away, many labourers and their families are stranded. Kundan is hosting about 20 of them at his house.

Kundan and Sangram have been protesting against hydropower projects in the geologically fragile region for years. Their petition had taken the state and Centre to court for the Rishiganga project. Kundan said, “What happened today was nature’s way of telling us things are horribly wrong.”