India’s monsoon season, running from June to September, has become more unpredictable due to climate change, experts say.
“Now is the time to consider that these unprecedented and erratic events will be more frequent and more intense in times to come,” said Abhiyant Tiwari, who leads health and climate resilience in India for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We are not going to escape from the imminent effects of climate change, regardless of our mitigation and adaptation efforts.”
Over 60,000 people, many of them tourists, were rescued across the state this week, according to a tweet from its chief minister. Some 250 people were stuck at 15,000 feet (4,500 meters) altitude in 14 degree (-10C) temperatures after a pass was blocked and had to be rescued, according to the chief minister, who has been regularly tweeting the state’s relief achievements.
“It’s one of the worst floods I have ever seen in my lifetime,” said Tikender Singh Panwar, the former deputy mayor of the state capital, Shimla, who is now a climate and urban activist. “It’s really catastrophic. And we can understand that the principal reason is climate change. That is not new.”
Videos on social media showed massive riverside hotels and critical highways crumbling in the waves, as well as crocodiles appearing in residential areas.
The Dalai Lama, who lives in exile from Tibet in the state, wrote to the chief minister expressing his condolences.
Panwar said that scientists had warned the state’s authorities that they would begin seeing higher rainfall in a shorter time frame more often. He said the disaster is caused by hydropower projects and infrastructure, like widened roads, for tourists — necessities for the smaller state to attract money. Shimla has a population of 200,000 but receives 6 million tourists a year.
“We’ve seen rains all our lives, but the damage and the disaster have not been to the level we see now,” said Panwar. “I never used to see muddied waters in the rain. Now the rivers are brown because the roads were constructed without mountain ethos and ethics. … It’s a planned destruction of the Himalayas.”
South of Himachal Pradesh, the capital city Delhi saw an unusual amount of rainfall in a short time over the past week, inundating crucial parts of the city.
The Yamuna River, swollen by all the rain farther north, reached new heights at more than 600 feet on Wednesday, according to the Delhi government. On Tuesday, the Central Water Commission called the river’s flow “severe” and above its “danger level.”
Nearly half a century ago, the river once touched the city’s 17th-century Red Fort but had receded over the decades. In a full circle, the river again reached the fort, filling up the nearby main road.
The flood even reached the office of Delhi’s chief minister, the Supreme Court, and one of the capital city’s most essential junctions called ITO, causing the army to come in and repair the area’s drains as traffic was diverted, according to local reports.
Schools were shut across the north, including in the capital, where some 30,000 people were evacuated to relief camps, according to the AP. Local reports said National Disaster Response Force teams had been deployed for rescue work, and authorities advised work-from-home allowances amid the knee-deep waters in some areas.
Tiwari, from the Natural Resources Defense Council, said these incidents should force public authorities to prevent infrastructure encroachment on river floodplains — an ongoing issue in India’s development. He added that urban areas must ensure storm water lines and drains are developed and maintained.
Panwar said he was not surprised that so many cars are now floating in the rivers because authorities built parking spaces at river beds. “This strategy is neither sustainable nor desirable,” he said.
