Kedarnath

Select Language Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Bengali Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Khmer Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Marathi Nepali Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

This is a collection of newspaper articles selected for the excellence of their content. You can help by converting it into an encyclopaedia-style entry, deleting portions of the kind normally not used in encyclopaedia entries. Please also put categories, paragraph indents, headings and sub-headings, and combine this with other articles on exactly the same subject. See examples and a tutorial.

Kedarnath: climate/ cloudbursts

Cloudburst on Kedar Dome no freak event

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

The Times of India

New Delhi: The June 16, 2013 cloudburst over Kedarnath, or to be exact over the mountain peak called Kedar Dome which stands at 6,831m,cannot be called a freak climatic phenomenon. Since 1998,the frequency of such heavy, concentrated rainfall over a short period has increased. Ukhimath witnessed the phenomenon in 1998,followed by a series of such events in 2002 in Phata in Mandakini Valley,Khedgaon in Kumaon,and Agunda in Bhilangar Valley.In 2003,Tehri,too,saw such abnormally high rainfall,as did Ladakh in 2010 which triggered mudslides leading to 255 deaths.

While cloudbursts are a natural hazard, our approach to development increases our vulnerability to hazards, said Dr Anirudh Uniyal,a scientist at Remote Sensing Application Centre, Lucknow.The real reason behind the catastrophe was overloading of the hill slopes with built structures. Until a few decades ago, a visit to Kedarnath was considered hazardous enough for people to start for the pilgrimage early morning and return by late afternoon, said Uniyal.

Temple unscathed by 2013 cloudburst tragedy

Shrine statues,Nandi still intact

Devastated by June 16, 2013 afternoons flash-floods,’Kedarnath town stands virtually razed but for the 1200-year-old Shiva temple built by Adi Shankaracharya. The shrine stands in six feet of debris. The statues and the lingam inside the shrine, as well as that of his mount, Nandi the bull, adorning the 250ft x70ft courtyard, are intact.Call it a miracle, but the Nandi statue and the other idols in the temple are intact, an official told news agencies here, adding that pilgrims who were inside the temple when the cloud burst took place had survived.

The cloudburst of June 2013

A major ecological tragedy took place in June 2103. This chart highlights the important issues.

Flash floods can’t sweep away their faith in God

Bella Jaisinghani | TNN 2013/06/23

The Times of India

Much less than shaking people’s belief the Uttarakhand tragedy has reinforced their faith in the twin forces of Shiva and Shakti. Believers insist that nothing remains intact in Kedarnath save the shrine. The shivling remains crowned by offerings of belpatra.

Devotees blame the dis aster on the fact that the statue of Goddess Kali Dhari Devi in Kedarnath guardian deity of Uttara khand, was removed from her temple a day before the cloudburst. The shrine was being shifted for a hydel power project that now lies in ruins. A similar attempt in 1882 had resulted in landslide that had flattened Kedarnath. Spiritual seek er Mukesh Trivedi from Borivli sounded a note of caution. Mukeshbhai runs the Shri Sumitradevi Seva Sansthan that works for afforestation in Rajasthan He says, “Man has abused nature to satisfy greed rather than need, and now it is payback time. We can not have unbridled con struction and hydel power projects eating away at the foundation of hill towns with rocky beds.”