5 October, Gangtok According to officials, a cloudburst above Lhonak Lake in North Sikkim caused a flash flood in the Teesta river basin, resulting in 14 fatalities and 102 missing people, including 22 members of the armed forces.
According to the Sikkim State Disaster Management Authority (SSDMA), 22,034 individuals were affected by the Wednesday disaster, while 2,011 people have already been saved.
According to the state government, 26 relief camps have been established in the four affected areas.
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There are 1,025 people living in the eight relief camps in the Gangtok district, but it was not immediately clear how many people were housed in the remaining 18 camps.
The Teesta river had a flash flood after a cloudburst in North Sikkim’s Lhonak Lake. This caused a large amount of water to build up, which moved towards the Chungthang dam and destroyed the power grid before moving downstream in a spate and flooding cities and villages.
Eleven bridges were damaged by the flood throughout the state, with eight of them being lost in the Mangan district alone. One bridge in Gangtok and two in Namchi were both damaged. In the four affected districts, 277 kuchcha and concrete homes as well as water and sewage infrastructure have been destroyed.
With 80% of it seriously damaged, Chungthang town took the weight of the flood the worst. The NH-10, which is regarded as the state’s lifeline, was severely damaged in multiple locations.
According to the SSDMA, three people died in Gangtok, four people died in Mangan, and seven people died in the Pakyong district.
59 of the 102 people that are missing, including army personnel, are from Pakyong. 22 persons are still missing in Gangtok, 16 in Mangan, and 5 in Namchi.
The SSDMA reported that 26 individuals were injured in total.
The Border Roads Organisation (BRO), where four crucial bridges have been seriously destroyed, is assisting the state in the rescue operations in Chungthang and Mangan, according to defense spokesperson Lt Col Mahendra Rawat.
Despite persistently heavy rain and extremely severe weather, he claimed, “more than 200 people have been moved to safer areas by the BRO.”
He continued, “Search and rescue efforts for the missing army personnel are still ongoing.”
The disaster has affected about 10,000 people in the Mangan district, while it also had an impact on 6,895 people in Pakyong, 2,579 people in Namchi, and 2,570 people in Gangtok.
