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India's Worst Himalayan Disaster | Kedarnath 2013 True Story | Dhruv Rathee — Transcript

by Dhruv Rathee · 3,588 words · 382 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:0017 June 2013
0:07Contact could not be established with Kedarnath.
0:10Rakesh Sharma, who was sitting in the
0:12government office of Dehradun, was very worried.
0:15He calls a pilot of a private helicopter company, Captain Bhupinder, and tells him,
0:20"Captain, you go and see what is the situation in Kedarnath."
0:23Now, Captain Bhupinder was a very experienced pilot.
0:26For the previous 20 years, he had been flying among these mountains.
0:29But it was not safe to fly at that time.
0:32After waiting for 8 hours, the weather stabilises a little.
0:36They had a half an hour window.
0:39And Captain Bhupinder takes off in his single
0:42engine, Bell 407 helicopter immediately.
0:46He reached Gaurikund and was met with unimaginable horrors.
0:51There used to be a car parking, with thousands of cars parked at all times.
0:56He couldn't find any sign of it.
0:59Then came Rambara, the place where thousands
1:01of passengers who go to Kedarnath stop.
1:04When pilots flew on this route, one of the first things they'd
1:07see was the green roof of the government guest house there.
1:11But that day, there was no roof, no market, and no people.
1:15In fact, Rambara had disappeared from the map.
1:19"This is the area of Rambara that you are seeing, it is completely destroyed now.
1:23There's nothing left in Rambara."
1:25What used to be a crowded market earlier, was now
1:28completely submerged in the water of the river.
1:31Mandakini river, had swelled up to 100 times its normal size.
1:38When the helicopter set out to return, Captain
1:40Bhupinder noticed hundreds of people below.
1:43Stranded at a river bank, they were waving their hands, shouting for help.
1:47The captain took the helicopter close to them, but there was no place to land.
1:52Most of the mountain had been washed away.
1:55People were standing on a thin layer of land.
1:57There were electric poles and wires all around.
2:01The pilot who had been flying in this terrain for 20 years,
2:04felt helpless.
2:06He had to break a news to the government,
2:09that no one in the country could have imagined.
2:13Everything was destroyed in Kedarnath.
2:20Here, the flood created such a ruckus that
2:23that the ISRO scientists call it the biggest natural
2:26disaster of the country after the 2004 tsunami.
2:29In this video, let's try to understand what happened there exactly.
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3:41Hello, friends!
3:42Before understanding this disaster,
3:44it is important for us to know the map of this place.
3:46North of Kedarnath Temple,
3:50there are two glaciers, Chorabari Glacier and Companion Glacier.
3:54The Chorabari Glacier feeds a lake.
3:56Chorabari Lake, which is about 2 km away Kedarnath, at an altitude of 3,960 metres.
4:03There is no man-made dam or embankment on this lake.
4:05It was held together by a mound of rocks and mud.
4:09This is called Moraine.
4:11Two rivers originate out of these two glaciers.
4:14River Mandakini from Chorabari, and River Saraswati from Companion.
4:16The temple is in the middle of these two rivers
4:20with each of them flowing on either side.
4:24But for the past some time, the government
4:26barricaded and turned Saraswati towards Mandakini.
4:30There two rivers merged about 1 km away from Kedarnath. The original stream
4:34flowing in the east of the temple was smaller and didn't carry much water.
4:386-7 km South from Kedarnath, was the village, Rambara.
4:43The last resting place for the visiting pilgrims.
4:47And 7 km south of it, that is, 14 km from Kedarnath,
4:51was Gaurikund, the starting point of this pilgrimage.
4:54Geographically, the land on which Kedarnath temple was built is an outwash plain.
5:00That is, the land was formed by the sand, soil,
5:04pebbles, and stones carried down by the rivers.
5:07Obviously, such land cannot be sturdy and a landslide may happen any time.
5:21In fact, the word Kedar in Kedarnath also means a muddy land.
5:25And Kedarnath meant Lord of the Marshy Ground.
5:29These geographical conditions were going to be the main cause of the disaster.
5:37In 2013, it had begun raining in Uttarakhand from 12th June.
5:41And between 15th and 18th June,
5:43It rained more than 440% of the normal amount in the state.
5:48And it wasn't that no one knew anything.
5:50On the morning of 15th June, IMD's Dehradun
5:52Centre sent a bulletin to the state government.
5:56It clearly stated that Kedarnath and 5 other places
5:59will experience heavy rains in the next 72 hours.
6:02And pilgrims should stop travelling and return to safe places.
6:06But no one cared.
6:08The char-dham pilgrimage continued.
6:10Thousands of lives continued their journey on the mountains in the rain.
6:15From Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, 45 year old Ram Singh and his family
6:20and relatives was on a char-dham pilgrimage with 17 people.
6:25Similarly, Indore's Mukesh had been staying at the New Tiwari
6:28Hotel, just 100 metres from the temple, along with 17 more people.
6:32Similarly, Jodhpur's Ramkaran Beniwal was on
6:35the pilgrimage with six members of his family.
6:3810,000 people were staying in Rambara.
6:41Heavy rains and landslides had already begun since 8:15 pm on 15th June.
6:48Many of these people had only one day left.
6:52But no one knew about this.
6:5716th June 2013, 6:45 pm.
7:00The Kedarnath temple was preparing for the evening prayers.
7:03People were gathering for this.
7:06Bells were ringing in the temple.
7:09Apart from the heavy rain and the pilgrims looking for shelter from the rain,
7:13everything else was just the same as it had been for centuries.
7:17But then, due to the heavy rain, at an altitude
7:20of about 4,250 meters, north of Kedarnath,
7:23a landslide occurred near the Companion Glacier.
7:30River Saraswati was already full of water because of the rain.
7:33And when the landslide happened, the water and debris
7:36from the mountain started flowing down rapidly.
7:40In a few seconds, River Saraswati had broken free and
7:43was flowing on the original path, east of the temple.
7:47The river kept picking up more debris along the way.
7:55In a few minutes, the entire upper part of Kedarnath was washed away by this water.
8:02The resting place of the Shankaracharya, Jal Nigam Guest House, and
8:05Bharat Seva Sangh Ashram disappeared from the map that same evening.
8:09Ram Singh, who was travelling from Ujjain with 17 people, was still in the temple.
8:15These people had left the temple after the
8:16evening prayers concluded, when disaster struck.
8:21Ram Singh's son wanted to see the mountains so he took him with him.
8:26His wife tagged along too.
8:29The only reason they could survive.
8:31Unfortunately, others weren't as fortunate.
8:33Suddenly, they heard a loud sound as if the sky had burst.
8:39And after a few seconds, a huge wall of water was rising towards the temple.
8:45Almost like a tsunami.
8:47The flow of water was so powerful that huge rocks flew into the air.
8:52And in 15 minutes, thousands of people were swept
8:54away in the water, right in front of their eyes.
8:56As scary as this situation was, what happened downstream was even more terrible.
9:06This water and debris flowed from Kedarnath to Rambara.
9:11Within a few seconds, everything changed, and the water washed away Rambara.
9:18The same thing happened in Gaurikund, downstream of Rambara.
9:22There was a 7-storey tall, Bharat Seva Shram Bhavan.
9:25300 people were staying there.
9:27When the river water came, the manager locked the main gate.
9:30He kept telling people that the building was safe.
9:33But the river had damaged the structure of the building.
9:37The entire building fell into the water.
9:41Only one of these 300 people survived.
9:44Over the next half an hour, about 50 more buildings
9:47in Gaurikund were washed away in the water.
9:50From Kedarnath to Gaurikund, thousands of people had died in a few minutes.
9:59Those who survived considered themselves to be lucky.
10:02They thought they had defeated death, but they
10:06didn't know that it was just the beginning.
10:09The survivors hid in the upper floors of the temples, guesthouses, and hotels.
10:13Everyone was waiting for the dawn.
10:18When the dawn came, everyone thought that their ordeal had ended.
10:21But destruction was still around the corner.
10:25The night of 16-17 June, it rained so much in Kedarnath as if clouds had burst.
10:30If I tell you the figures, that night it rained more than 370 mm.
10:35For comparison, Delhi records an annual rain of around 770 mm.
10:39Meaning, half of the rain Delhi gets in a year, rained in Kedarnath that one night.
10:46Because of so much rain, Lake Chorabari was filled with water.
10:50This was accompanied by something else.
10:52Before the rain, there had been heavy snowfall in the Himalayas.
10:56So when the warmer rain water fell on the glacier, the ice started melting.
10:58This meant a new influx of water in the lake.
11:04Due to this rain, 3 to 4 times the normal amount of ice melted.
11:09There was no outlet at this lake to safely drain the excess water.
11:13That's why hundreds of thousands of litres of water from
11:16the rain and snow-melt, kept on accumulating in this lake.
11:19Now, only two possibilities remained.
11:21Either the rain would stop or that weak wall would break.
11:26And you can guess what happened next.
11:30On the morning of June 17th, at 6:45 am, the Moraine,
11:33that is, the weak wall made of rocks and mud, broke.
11:40The entire lake emptied in just 5-10 minutes.
11:47According to one estimate, it contained around 260 million litres
11:51of water, which was now moving towards Kedarnath at full speed.
11:55The water reached River Mandakini. Water was already
12:00flowing in two streams, now had a new stream.
12:05Water was flowing towards Kedarnath from three sides.
12:08The water was so powerful that it carried rocks 3-10 metres in diameter.
12:16By this time, the people who had survived the first wave, were preparing to leave.
12:20When they turned back, they saw it happen far away.
12:23A huge wave of water, a tsunami of debris, was hurling towards them.
12:30It sounded like the roar of thousand lions.
12:36It was destroying everything, every rock, that was on its way.
12:41No one had time to think. People started running away.
12:45But where could they run too? Because this time,
12:47the water was coming in from three directions.
12:53At this time, most of the people were staying
12:55in the 50-60 guest houses around the temple.
12:58This is where the most destruction took place.
13:00In a hotel just 100 meters from the temple,
13:03staying at the New Tiwari Hotel, Indore's Mukesh called his brother at 7:10 pm.
13:07On the call he said,
13:09"I am trying my best, but there is no safe place here.
13:13There is water everywhere."
13:15The owner of the hotel had also given up and said that,
13:18"In the worst case, we will all die together."
13:20After this, the call disconnected suddenly.
13:22Mukesh's brother called again,
13:25but no one answered his calls.
13:29There were 17 people in the hotel with Mukesh, but no one was found.
13:34Dozens of hotels there were washed away like this.
13:38In about 15-20 minutes, the water had destroyed everything.
13:42But in the midst of this destruction, one thing remained standing still.
13:46The Kedarnath temple.
13:47The shops and buildings around the temple had been completely destroyed.
13:51But the temple built in the 8th century remained standing tall.
13:55And the reason behind this was also very interesting.
13:58A big rock that had been carried by water,
14:01had stopped a few metres behind the temple.
14:04This rock divided the flow of water and debris into two parts,
14:07causing it to flow around the temple.
14:10The temple survived, but it was damaged.
14:14It was filled with mud and water.
14:16And when the water receded, we saw dead bodies lining the doors of the temple.
14:21According to the temple's priest, the water inside
14:22the temple had reached the height of 6 feet.0
14:25And when the western gate of the temple broke, the water could finally flow out.
14:29Several priests of the temple were also washed away in the water.
14:32This destruction was not limited only to Kedarnath.
14:35The water rushed downstream the Rivers Mandakini and Alaknanda.
14:39Their water levels had increased by 10 meters
14:41causing destruction in the areas below.
14:43For the people who had survived this, their real fight was about to begin.
14:48Because Kedarnath Valley was now completely cut off from the rest of the world.
14:52About 170,000 people were still stuck there and
14:55almost all the roads to help them were closed.
14:59There was no road connectivity due to landslides,
15:02and helicopters could not fly to there due to rain.
15:05The phone lines were also dead.
15:06The government did not know what had happened in Kedarnath.
15:09They got the first news of the destruction on the evening of 17th June,
15:12after Captain Bhupinder's helicopter ride.
15:16The next morning, on 18th June, civil pilots like Captain Bhupinder
15:20flew to the mountains on their small aircraft to rescue the people.
15:24On 18th June, the government sent a team of 47 NDRF soldiers to Kedarnath,
15:29they were the first government team to reach there.
15:32With the help of the Indian Army and the Indian Air Force,
15:34more than 100,000 people were rescued, transported through air or land.
15:39But this rescue was at a cost.
15:41On 25th June, an MI-17 helicopter crashed near Gaurikund
15:47and all 20 soldiers in the helicopter died.
15:50The problem was that despite all this,
15:52it was not easy to rescue 150,000 people.
15:56Many people could not get help on time
15:58and some people who escaped the flood by going up the mountains,
16:01many of them died because of lack of food and cold.
16:04Ramkaran Beniwal narrates a heart-wrenching story.
16:08On 16th June, his family and he,
16:10were sitting by the river in Rambara, after their visit to Kedarnath.
16:13Suddenly he heard loud noises from the rocks.
16:17As if the entire mountain was shaking, and then suddenly there was a flood,
16:21he had to see his wife and family members be washed away in the water.
16:25"It was 11 o'clock, there were loud noises all around.
16:29One by one, everyone was washed away by the river."
16:32To save himself from the flood, he climbed a tree
16:36and waited there for 4 days before help arrived.
16:39He saw several others like him, sitting on the
16:42trees, die because of hunger, thirst, and cold.
16:45This might have happened to Ramkaran Beniwal too.
16:49But on the morning of 20th June,
16:50he saw a helicopter in the sky.
16:53He was successfully rescued then.
16:56The most shocking thing is that
16:58we still do not have an accurate answer to how many lives were lost in this disaster?
17:03Because the government didn't know
17:05how many people had gone to Kedarnath that day.
17:07In 2013, neither the visitors were
17:10registered nor were these hotels registered.
17:15More than 4,400 deaths were recorded officially.
17:17But, in his book, Rage of the River, journalist Hridayesh Joshi mentions
17:22that the locals and relief workers speak of 12,000 to 15,000 deaths.
17:27For many months and years after the flood, skeletons could be found in the area.
17:31In September 2020, after 7 years of
17:33disaster, 4 bodies were found near Kedarnath.
17:37More than 3,100 people are still missing, their bodies have not been found yet.
17:42Now the question arises, what was the reason behind this devastating tragedy?
17:46The first reason is natural. The monsoon winds from the Bay of Bengal that were
17:50supposed to reach Uttarakhand on 14th July, had arrived a month earlier, on 14th June.
17:55Right at the peak of the char-dham pilgrimage.
17:58At the same time, another set of monsoon winds came from the
18:01Arabian Sea, and the two monsoons winds collided over Uttarakhand.
18:05Because of this, it rained heavily for three days.
18:12But this disaster was not completely natural. It was partially man-made too.
18:17Kedarnath, which was built on the loose base of sand, mud, and rocks
18:20carried down from the glacier, was never built for so many people.
18:25In 1882, there was only one temple and four or five huts.
18:29But then in 2000, Uttarakhand became a separate
18:32state and religious tourism was promoted.
18:34Due to which the number of tourists kept on increasing.
18:37While only about 80,000 people had visited Kedarnath in 1999,
18:41by 2000, the number had grown to more than 200,000.
18:43There were 550,000 tourists in 2007.
18:45And in 2012, 583,000 tourists visited Kedarnath.
18:51That means in just 13 years,
18:53the number of people visiting Kedarnath increased by 7 times.
18:55And because people were coming,
18:57they needed infrastructure too.
18:59Mountains were cut and roads were built.
19:01There was no space for people to stay on the mountains,
19:03so illegal hotels and guest houses were built on the banks of the river.
19:07Many of these were on the river's path.
19:10When River Saraswati, flowing in the east of Kedarnath,
19:12was turned westwards towards River Mandakini, using
19:15embankments, the original route of the river in the East
19:18dried up. People then began constructing buildings there.
19:22Similarly, people had constructed buildings on the west
19:24stream of Mandakini, because it had been dried up for decades.
19:27Quite obviously, when these rivers return to their original route,
19:31these houses, hotels, and guest houses will be carried away in the flow.
19:36The truth is that the river didn't change its path.
19:40Humans had built houses on the river's path.
19:42And the river had just returned to its old path.
19:46Apart from this, the hydropower projects being set up in Uttarakhand
19:50in the name of development played a big role in this disaster.
19:53According to the Down to Earth investigation, at that
19:55time, 45 hydropower projects were going on in Uttarakhand.
19:59And the government had a plan to build 199 projects.
20:01Under these projects, rivers were being rerouted,
20:04mountains were being blown apart by dynamite.
20:07Tunnels were dug in the mountains and the debris was being dumped on the river banks.
20:15This caused the riverbed to rise and the surface of the river to widen.
20:19In December 2014, in front of the Supreme
20:21Court, the central government acknowledged that
20:23hydro power projects had a direct and indirect impact on this disaster.
20:28And the most devastation was caused right around these projects.
20:34But do you know what is sad?
20:36Even after 13 years, we have not learned anything from this disaster.
20:40The same mistakes are being repeated again.
20:42Which can lead to another such accident.
20:45In 2014, an expert panel set up by the Supreme Court recommended that
20:49not more than 5,000 pilgrims should visit Kedarnath in a day.
20:53The government had enforced these limits initially, but later it was revoked.
20:57Whether for religious appeasement or to earn more profit.
21:01These politicians increased the number of
21:03pilgrims allowed from 5,000 to 18,000 per day.
21:05That is, more than 3.5 times the recommendation.
21:09In fact, in 2022, more than 1.4 million people reached Kedarnath,
21:122.5 times the number of visitors at the peak of the disaster.
21:16Hotels and shops have been built at the same places again.
21:19On government land, where 175 shops and buildings
21:22were destroyed, their owners rebuilt the buildings.
21:26Some of them were helped by the government.
21:28Hydro power projects have not been withdrawn. The government
21:31is still moving forward to build hundreds of projects here.
21:34All of this, when everyone knows the price we paid during the disaster of 2013.
21:39According to the World Bank, due to this flood, Uttarakhand lost
21:43approximately $3.8 billion, more than the state's annual budget that year.
21:48The mountains are warning us constantly.
21:50In July 2023, the Kedarnath pilgrimage had to
21:54be stopped due to heavy rain and landslides.
21:59And a few days later, on the night of 4 August 2023, near the same
22:02Gaurikund, that was recovering from the great destruction of 2013,
22:05several shops were destroyed in a big landslide.
22:07Three people died.
22:08The next year, in July 2024, there was another landslide, and 3 more people died.
22:13Experts say that over the 10 years following the disaster,
22:15instead of improving, the situation has deteriorated.
22:18And in the coming years, Kedarnath may have to face even bigger disasters.
22:24It might bring more destruction and more deaths.
22:34Don't forget to check out TapTap Send. The link is pinned below in the comments.
22:37And friends, in 2022, a similar incident happened due to these reasons.
22:43The Uttarkashi Tunnel Collapse.
22:45I have made a detailed video on that as well.
22:47Click here to watch it.
22:49Thank you very much!

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