Landslide in Dharchula

• 04 Jul 2024

Why in News?

Recently, A severe landslide has completely blocked the road to Dharchula in Pithoragarh district of Uttarakhand.

• Due to heavy rain, six highways and 96 roads are closed in Uttarakhand. Landslides have blocked 47 rural roads.

Key Points

• Heavy rainfall causes landslides and accidents, posing a significant challenge for Uttarakhand every monsoon.
  • In 2023, nearly 100 people died and many went missing from June to September.
• The CM Pushkar Dhami called for a safety audit of all transformers during the monsoon and urged for rapid development of industrial institutions in the state to boost power generation.

Landslide

• A landslide is defined as the movement of a mass of rock, debris, or earth down a slope.
• They are a type of mass wasting, which denotes any downward movement of soil and rock under the direct influence of gravity.
• The term landslide encompasses five modes of slope movement: falls, topples, slides, spreads, and flows.
• Causes:
  • Slope movement occurs when forces acting downward (mainly due to gravity) exceed the strength of the earth materials that compose the slope.
  • Landslides are caused due to three major factors: geology, morphology, and human activity.
    • Geology refers to characteristics of the material. The earth or rock might be weak or fractured, or different layers may have different strengths and stiffness.
    • Morphology refers to the structure of the land. For example, slopes that lose their vegetation to fire or drought are more vulnerable to landslides.
      • Vegetation holds soil in place, and without the root systems of trees, bushes, and other plants, the land is more likely to slide away.
    • Human activity which includes agriculture and construction increases the risk of a landslide.
• Landslide-Prone Areas:
  • The entire Himalayan tract, hills/mountains in sub-Himalayan terrains of North-east India, Western Ghats, the Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu Konkan areas are landslide-prone.