Panic over huge home cracks in India’s Uttarakhand

• Friday’s high-level meeting will be held by the state’s chief minister.
• This week, dozens of individuals were relocated to temporary shelters.
• Pushkar Singh Dhami is anticipated to travel to Joshimath soon.

After significant fractures started to show in their homes, Joshimath residents in the state of Uttarakhand are calling for evacuation and restoration.

Following the blocking of a national highway in the Himalayan state by tens of thousands of demonstrators on Thursday, authorities halted a number of building projects.

Friday’s high-level meeting will be held by the state’s chief minister to discuss the matter.

This week, dozens of individuals were relocated to temporary shelters.

According to district officials, more than 500 homes in the region have developed cracks as a result of gradual land subsidence, which is the term for the ground gradually sinking.

However, since then, development has multiplied in Uttarakhand state, which is located in the ecologically vulnerable Himalayan region. Millions of pilgrims visit the state’s numerous revered Hindu shrines each year.

According to experts, the region’s ecological balance is being harmed by the rampant building, making it more susceptible to landslides and earthquakes.

On Thursday, officials announced that many building projects had been put on hold “until further orders,” including the massive road-widening project for the Char Dham (Hindu pilgrimage route).

Vineet Khare of the BBC visited Joshimath in October and spoke with a number of the town’s terrified citizens.

Sumedha Bhatt, who resides in Ravigram hamlet, said to him, “We leave the house the instant it starts raining because we’re afraid.”

It was discovered during the visit that many individuals had already started to leave their homes as a result of the cracks starting to open up from the recent severe rains. Some people had also turned to temporary fixes, such covering their homes with polyethylene sheeting to stop seepage and adding extra support with wooden planks.

Geologist Swapnamita Vaideswaran said that her studies over the previous two years showed that Ravigram hamlet was sinking by 85mm per year. She has been utilising archival and satellite photography to map the scale of the subsidence.

Pushkar Singh Dhami, the chief minister of Uttarakhand, is anticipated to travel to Joshimath soon.

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