Uttarakhand govt to conduct comprehensive survey of state's disaster-prone cities

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Uttarakhand government will conduct a comprehensive survey of disaster-prone cities and towns, tenders for which have been invited, officials said. Director of Uttarakhand Landslide Mitigation and Management Centre Shantanu Sarkar said tenders will be verified after monsoon and work on the survey could take time. «Right now we have started the process which is at the planning stage.

We have not yet decided which cities or towns will be included in this,» Sarkar said. Geophysical and geo-mapping investigation of cities will be part of the survey, he said. In January this year, the land subsidence crisis in Joshimath grabbed national attention.

Huge cracks had appeared in many houses, fields and roads making the town unsafe to live in, and a large number of people had to be moved to safer places. The state government also got various national level technical institutes to investigate various aspects of the Joshimath subsidence. It also asked experts to ascertain whether the 520 MW Tapovan Vishnugad Hydroelectric Project, which has an underground tunnel passing near Joshimath, was responsible for the landslide and cracks.

Institutes such as the Central Building Research Institute, National Geophysical Research Institute, Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Geological Survey of India, Central Ground Water Board, Indian Institute of Remote Sensing and IIT Roorkee had studied the town from various aspects. However, their findings are yet to be known. After the land subsidence crisis in Joshimath, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami had said that a study of load bearing capacity of all major hill towns of the state, including Joshimath, would be conducted.