Landslides, blocked roads hamper Indian flood rescue effort

Rescuers battled heavy rain and blocked roads in India's Himalayan state of Uttarakhand on Wednesday (August 6), after at least four people died in sudden flooding and landslides the previous day. In the struggle to reach Dharali village, where authorities say homes and roads lay submerged by water, mud and rocks, teams used heavy machinery to shift boulders and made routes through sludge with sheets of metal, according to video released by the State Disaster Response Force. Residents of nearby villages heard a loud rumble on Tuesday afternoon before a wall of water crashed into Dharali, media said. This Dharali resident says it all happened so fast that some people didn't even have time to run. The Indian Army said 70 people were brought to safety on Wednesday, while the state’s chief minister told local news agency ANI about 130 were rescued the previous night. More troops, accompanied by tracker dogs, drones and earthmoving equipment are being mobilized for the rescue effort, the army’s central command said. Uttarakhand is prone to floods and landslides, which some experts blame on climate change. Weather experts and geologists told media the cause of the havoc needed to be investigated in the absence of heavy rain in the area on Tuesday, adding that they suspected the cause could be a glacial lake outburst flood.