Gopeshwar, March 1: Avalanches, common enough in winter in Badrinath and Mana valley, become more likely to occur between January and March after fresh snowfall.
The fear of the natural phenomenon explains the centuries-old practice of people living in Mana and adjoining villages to shift to lower areas of the valley after the onset of winter each year.
Environmentalist and Chipko movement leader Chandi Prasad Bhatt said that except the main temple of Badrinath, a large area of Badripuri is highly vulnerable to avalanches.
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“If we look at the previous incidents of avalanches in this area, then Badripuri keeps suffering damages due to avalanches almost every decade. In 2014, there was heavy damage due to an avalanche in the Narayan Parvat area in Badrinath,” the Gandhi Peace Prize winner said.
In the past, avalanches have caused loss of life and property not only in Badripuri but also in Mana and the adjoining villages, he said.
Bhatt said a few years ago, in a meeting, the DRDO scientists working in this area, especially the scientists of ‘SASA’ from Himachal Pradesh, were requested that the areas most sensitive to avalanches should be identified.
It was also recommended that arrangements should be made to select safe places for the people deployed in these areas to live in winter.
An avalanche occurred Friday near Mana village, hardly less than a kilometre from Badrinath, and the first village on the border.
A labourer died and 49 were pulled out alive from the snow that engulfed a BRO camp in the high-altitude Mana village in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district .
Ancestors of the people of Mana, which consists of more than four hundred tribal families, reared sheep and traded with people from Tibet. The trade stopped after the 1962 India-China war.
Natives return to Mana around the last week of April and the beginning of May. They farm, and grow crops, especially potatoes and vegetables, till November.
With the onset of winter in November, they move near Gopeshwar, about a hundred kilometers away from Mana.
Pradhan Pitambar Singh Molfa told PTI that for centuries, Mana have been following the custom of moving to lower reaches of the valley due to extreme cold.
He said the human settlements that have come up in half a dozen sub-villages, including Gajkoti, Indradhara, Pattaya, Bamni and Nagni near Badrinath are a result of natives’ experience of the cold.
In 1968 February, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police camp near Mana village was hit by an avalanche, killing 18 soldiers living in the, Molfa said.
Bhatt said that the entire Badrinath valley, which starts from Devdarshini, and passes Bamni and Nagni villages, to Badripuri, nestled between Nar and Narayan mountains, Gajkoti, Indradhara, Pattaya, Mana and Mata Murti, forms a flat bed up to Basudhara and the origin of Alaknanda, Alka and the mouth of Satopanth glacier.
He said little attention is being paid to the vulnerability of this high Himalayan region, where construction work continues unabated.
Molfa said the labourers affected by the Friday avalanche lived in accommodation made of containers near the road to Mana Pass. Eight containers were set up there by the contractor.
Some containers were believed to have swept to Alaknanda valley. (PTI)
