Visit Ladakh | News
Friday, 10 September 2010 07:45
LEH: The mud has baked to a thick, hard crust, roads are being cleared of debris and tourists are trickling in once again. But hauling Leh and its people back to their feet will still take months. It's a race against time as a severe winter looms ahead. More than a month since the disaster happened, Leh is still living on a prayer.
At least 130 people were killed when flash floods triggered by torrential rains struck this Himalayan town in Ladakh region on August 6. Dozens of NGOs swooped in for basic relief work and rescue. Having done their bit, some of them have left. Those whose homes were washed away have got tents, blankets, clothes, medicines and basic cooking ware.
Numerous relief camps have sprouted, especially around Leh, providing highly cramped shelter to about 450 families. At the largest, Solar Colony, about six kilometres from Leh, 230 families are huddled in 50-odd tents. For nearly a month, camp residents were without toilets. Now NGOs like Oxfam and Pragya are taking care of that. But in Ladakh, where temperatures can go down to -30°C in the winters, living in tents for month while everyone gets their act together, is not a solution. They have to move into more sheltered and secure lodgings and soon.
The government promised Rs 2 lakh for total damage of property and allotment of land. But the money will be made available via the State Bank of India and that too in stages. And, 350-400 of the 1,297 legitimate claimants don't have accounts. Plus, houses built with traditional mud blocks are still collapsing and those who were living on rent aren't covered. New designs are being proposed for building houses.
At Phayang, Hajira Banu's brand new home, completed in June this year, has been completely ruined. Phayang has seen 17 deaths; two persons are still missing. Banu's brother-in-law, Hussain Ali lost his entire family - wife and three daughters - except one daughter. He's received Rs 1 lakh per head compensation for the deaths but is yet to see the money for shelter. "I'll have to build but not here. Somewhere further up," he says. Now that mud blocks are no longer the most feasible option, there's a proposal to create depots where construction material will be made available for purchase.
At Solar Colony, Sonam Yangskit's two kids have gone back to school but it's hard to make them concentrate at the camp where they share a tent with another family. Padma Chuskit, 35, has been in a tent at another camp for a month. "It's very hot during the day though nights are normal," she says adding that the food she cooks often goes bad due to the heat. Slowed in their escape by her handicapped husband, her family sat in their neighbour's home for hours till the water stopped coming. Their one-storey house, now looks like a basement with the mud having raised the ground by several feet. Her village Saboo, once a prosperous 'model village,' now in ruins with cars turned turtle strewn around, is just getting its telephone network re-established. "Kal tak ho jayega," says landman Tsewang Stupjes confidently. His team raked the mud out over four days.
But even if their homes have been spared, Leh farmers have lost agricultural land and with it, their livelihood. In Taru village some way off, agricultural land on which the village folk grew wheat and barley have turned rocky and unusable. 80% of farmland got buried under several feet of loose rocks and boulder when Taru Nala, now again a nala, rose to flood homes perched over 10 feet above it. The top soil is gone along with all tools, farming equipment; irrigation channels are destroyed as well as the artificial glaciers. Equipment will have to be restored; there are promises of irrigation networks being reconstructed; most livestock has miraculously survived.
There are still prayer meetings and public mourning in villages. But Leh's still coming to terms with the tragedy.
Add a comment
Dharamsala, Sep 10 – Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama will visit cloudburst-hit areas in Leh in Jammu and Kashmir next week to console relatives of those who died in the disaster, an official said here Friday.