The hill state of Himachal Pradesh has been battered by rains and witnessed disastrous scenes this season, leaving over 50 people dead. As monsoon horror continues, hundreds of houses collapsed and washed away.
Meanwhile, a six-year-old girl asked her father, who is reporting stories from Shimla, if her house too will collapse and their family will die. “Will we also die, will our house too break, papa,” she asked her father, a PTI reporter in Shimla, as the horror of the devastating rains here hit home on Independence Day.
The girl was worried as a couple of multi-storey houses, some makeshift homes and a slaughterhouse were buried under the rubble. Two girls, studying in nursery and class 2 at her school, had died Monday when a landslip buried a Shiv temple in the city’s Summer Hill locality.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) said that Himachal Pradesh has witnessed scattered rainfall in the last 24 hours and predicted scattered rains in the next 4-5 days.
“The state witnessed scattered rainfall in the last 24 hours. Monsoon is on the higher side this time…If we see the data, there is 43% excess rainfall since June 1 in Himachal Pradesh. Scattered rainfall will occur in the next 4-5 days. There will be controlled rainfall in the state till August 25,” said Surender Paul, IMD Scientist.