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The natural disasters in Himalayas are simply unavoidable. Initial casualties will happen as soon as disaster strikes. It is just like case of terror attack- where those at the gates are most vulnerable but what happens next is something that depends on your counter reaction.
If you study historic records of floods and flash floods in Garhwal Himalayas- u will find out as to how our terrain is prone to natural disasters and people had lost lives in the past- Srinagar was flattened in 19th century floods- surely we had no dams then! #Uttarakhand
But unlike 19th century, even a disaster of scale as huge as 2013 couldn’t flatten Srinagar as we had liberty of using Srinagar dam to regulate discharge and avoid flash floods - that one dam helped save the city from fury. #Uttarakhand
In 2013, between the origin of the disaster - Chorabari and Srinagar- we had only one dam - Srinagar Dam and there were 3 under construction projects - Lanco, L&T and one on MadMaheswar Ganga. All 3 projects got washed out then just as yesterday! #Uttarakhand
The disaster yesterday in terms of first thrust caused by avalanche must have been similar (if not more) as 2013 but what helped yesterday was-
— we had a large network of small and big dams that helped regulate the discharge and thus we cud help avoid flash floods or deluge
— we had a large network of small and big dams that helped regulate the discharge and thus we cud help avoid flash floods or deluge
No doubt that we were also helped by the weather as there were no follow up rains to add to the problem caused by the avalanche. But fact remains that network of dams helped us most yesterday #Uttarakhand https://twitter.com/alok_bhatt/status/1358616048283443201
Crude reality is that dams or no dams- first set of casualties following any disaster is simply unavoidable. But what u do from that point onwards determines the final extent of the damage - do read this thread as well #Uttarakhand https://twitter.com/alok_bhatt/status/1358616048283443201
Yesterday we could avoid flash floods as all operational dams were used to regulate discharge in an orderly manner - and guess what our roads helped send men and material to the affected site quickly - so be it dams or roads, everything helped us contain the damage #Uttarakhand
