Pilgrims, progress, and the political economy of disaster preparedness – the example of the 2013 Uttarakhand flood and Kedarnath disaster

The State of Remote Sensing Capabilities of Cascading Hazards Over High Mountain Asia

“…The outburst flood paired with the extreme rainfall caused severe flooding that devastated the downstream region, which included multiple mass wasting events along the Mandakini and Saraswati rivers and associated tributaries (Figure 8). Farther downstream, several other landslides blocked the river at various points, forming temporary lakes that subsequently outburst and caused a massive flood and debris flow (Sati and Gahalaut, 2013;Ziegler et al, 2014). The Kedarnath disaster killed more than 6,000 people and also affected 30 hydropower plants (Allen et al, 2016b), causing a total economic loss >$3.8 billion (World Bank, 2014).…”

Rivers in the Himalaya: Responses to Neotectonics and Past Climate

“…This excess rainfall and snow melt contributed heavily to the discharge of river causing massive flood, bank erosion and landslides in the region. As a result of this flood ~4000 people lost their lives and ~12000 crore of rupees of property was lost in the state of Uttarakhandand the magnitude, both in terms of hydromorphology and vulnerability, of this flood was highest as compared to past such experiences from years 1893, 1894and 1970(Rana et al, 2013Ziegler et al, 2014).The post flood geomorphic studies along the rivers Mandakini and Alaknanda indicated that this flood caused massive aggradation of the riverbed where the sediment was mainly sourced from moraines and fans located in trans-Himalayan region and large landslides in Higher and Lesser Himalaya. The study also highlighted the bulking of river at places was caused due to the erosion of the power project generated muck (Sundriyal et al, 2015).…”

“…However, in the excess monsoon years, ISM related rainfall also makes significant contribution and cause flooding.The Indus, the Tantse and the Spiti river, where the Indus flows along the ISZ, the Tangtse valley is affected by Karakoram strike-slip fault and the Spiti river responds to extensional regime of tectonic unit located between the STDS and ZCT (Zanskar counter thrust). Thus the landscape of arid Himalaya, Ladakh, in particular, provides an opportunity to understand evolution of Himalaya under hydrologically stressed fluvial environment (Juyal, 2014).The Indus River flows from East-west from Nyoma where the gradients are gentler then makes deep and narrow gorge uptoUpshi from where it opens up into a wide valley of Leh. From Leh downstream it cuts through Indus molasses and makes deepest gorge in the NW Himalayan Syntaxes region and finally drains into foreland.…”

The Best of Intentions?

“…At the same time, however, they were more vulnerable to many other threats to human wellbeing. In a recent commentary on the 2013 Uttarakhand flood in India, Ziegler et al (2014) write: "While these post-event [policy] recommendations come easily, it is much more difficult to understand why and how the current vulnerability has developed and how change can be effected in the current political economy." It is just this disconnect between selfevident policies on the one hand and hidden causations on the other that we have been intent on revealing.…”