CLOUDBURSTS and flash floods triggered by heavy overnight rains battered Himachal Pradesh’s Mandi district, leaving five people dead, five injured and 16 missing, officials said on Tuesday. The State witnessed 11 cloudburst incidents, four flash floods and a major landslide on Tuesday, most of them in Mandi district, disrupting normal life. Mandi received extensively high rainfall of 253.8 mm since Monday evening. Ten houses, 12 cattle sheds, one bridge and several roads have been damaged, 26 cattle perished and efforts are on to rescue stranded nine people in Mandi district, the officials said. A total of 287 people including 233 in Mandi, 51 in Hamirpur and three in Chamba have been rescued safely, according to the state emergency operation centre.

 

In Mandi district, cloudbursts were reported in four places in Gohar, three in Karsog, two in Dharampur and one place in Thunag. Two deaths were reported in Bada and one in Talwara, both in Gohar area, one in old Bazaar in Karsog while one body was recovered at Neri-Kotla in Jogindernagar. Deputy Commissioner, Mandi, Apoorv Devgan said that several people have been rescued and shifted to safe places as cloudbursts and flash floods following heavy rains caused extensive damage at some places in the district. Two teams each of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) along with police and home guards are engaged in search and rescue operations in the district. All the rivers and streams in the district are in full spate and over 1.5 lakh cusecs of water has been released from the Pandoh Dam over Beas river. Pilgrims stuck in U’khand, efforts on to move them to safer place, says Shinde: A LARGE group of tourists from Maharashtra is stranded at Yamunotri, a key Char Dham site in Uttarakhand, and efforts are on by local authorities to rescue and move them to a safer location, Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde said on Tuesday.

 

The Maharashtra Government is in touch with its Uttarakhand counterpart to ensure the safety of devotees, he told reporters in the premises of Vidhan Bhawan, where the State legislature is currently having its monsoon session. “Some people from Maharashtra are stuck at Yamunotri Dham. I have personally spoken to one of the affected tourists from Mahabaleshwar (in Satara district). We are in touch with the Government in Uttarakhand, and they have informed us that rescue operations are underway,” Shinde said.