The HKH Snow Update 2025 highlights a significant decline in seasonal snow across the Hindu Kush Himalaya region, with snow persistence 23.6% below normal — the lowest in 23 years. This trend, now in its third consecutive year, threatens water security for nearly two billion people. All twelve major river …
IT IS ironic that earthquakes should extract such a high human cost in India, which pioneered the framing of building codes for seismic areas in 1962. When the Japanese city of Kobe was rocked in 1995, the death toll was 6,400 as compared to about 30,000 lives lost during the …
A year has passed. But Gujarat remains shaky in more ways than one. Metaphorically, its residents are struggling to come to grips with the devastation caused by the January 26, 2001, earthquake. In a literal sense, too, the ground beneath their feet is anything but terra firma. Sample this. Junagarh …
india can expect one or more devastating earthquakes in the near future, predict researchers from the University of Colorado, usa. An analysis of the shifting Indian subcontinent reveals enormous pent-up strain along most of the 1,200-km arc where it slides under the Himalaya and beyond the Tibetan plateau. The researchers …
Dhanna Lal, a casual labourer with the Airport Authority of India's Pratapgarh (Rajasthan) office, believes that earthquakes are a cosmic curse. So when his dried village well, some 300 km away from Bhuj, was filled with water immediately after the earthquake, he was baffled. Similar stories abound in even parched …
There cannot be a bigger irony. As the nation was preparing to smugly display its military might and scientific prowess on Republic Day, a mighty earthquake flattened a large part of Gujarat. The quake, however, did not quite shake the ruling elite, who till afternoon participated in the long ceremonial …
D eath and earthquakes do not come by appointment. However, an earthquake gives definitive indications of its arrival. In Gujarat, there were many. A 4.2 magnitude quake rocked the Rann of Kachhch on December 24, 2000. Its epicentre was 22 km away from Bhuj. Bhavnagar, near Bhuj, also felt several …
T he Gujarat earthquake has proved that even in the highly seismic zones like Bhuj, Uttarakhand and the Northeast, our preparedness and crisis management is a monumental failure. Bhuj is one of the 13 hotspots on India's seismic hazard map that was prepared three years ago. The assessment was that …
There is no dearth of scientific knowledge in our country, but it does not get built into our daily lives Disasters come and go, they are just temporary in nature, but our governance has become a permanent disaster. India is a country blessed with one natural disaster after another. If …
Small is beautiful. But not to the big people. Small doesn't help siphon funds. It doesn't give huge opportunities to contractors, politicians and bureaucrats. It requires a decentralised mode of thinking, which is diametrical to the motives of India's politicians and administrators
At least 21 million citizens of Nairobi are facing acute water shortage. Citizens allege that mismanagement, corruption and lack of preparedness on the part the government officials have led to the present state of affairs. The government on the other hand blames drought of the past three years. Water scarcity …
as the drought continues to tightens its vise-like grip on the land, killing people and cattle alike, the entire country turns to watching the sky for succor. The fleecy clouds - precusor of the approaching monsoon. This year, Indians have begun their vigil for the arrival of the monsoon earlier …
devastating cyclones come and go but nature and humans can help reduce the extent of damage. When we fail to protect nature and do not take preventive and corrective measures all things living suffer immensely. Last year's super cyclone that struck the coast of Orissa with wind-speeds of up to …
Ninety per cent of the 50,000 persons who died in the October 29, 1999, super cyclone that hit the Ersama block in coastal Orissa would be alive today - if only the population there had been evacuated inland, beyond the reach of the three 10-metre-high tidal waves that swept away …
time and again, India's east coast has been battered by storm surges and cyclones. The loss of life and property often runs into millions of rupees. And frequently in the eye of the storm is the meteorological authorities, who are blamed for not flashing the warning signals beforehand. To make …
IT IS only when a disaster of the magnitude that struck Orissa takes place, does a country realise the need to perfect its scientific infrastructure. Space technology, for one, helps in planning development in such a way as to minimise the impact of such a disaster, or when it strikes, …
a month after the super cyclone, which left a trail of death and destruction in the Orissa coast, a nation watched in disbelief Orissa chief minister Giridhar Gamang saying: "We don't know what to do?' The same confusion grips the Central government machinery. More than 11,000 people have lost their …
The "super cyclone' will leave a permanent environmental impact on the coastal ecology of the region. According to eyewitnesses, the affected districts have lost more than 90 per cent of their green cover. "There is hardly any tree left on the landscape,' the chief minister said immediately after the cyclone. …
What is the lesson we have learnt from the Orissa cyclone? The poor, as individuals, learn from each cyclone or flood and adopt measures that reduce their vulnerability. But, as far as a system of emergency management goes, we need to make more efforts to learn from each natural disaster. …
prevention pays, but only when we invest in it. It will not pay dividends, without sustained, suitable and strategic community-level investments across the country and across development sectors. Disasters will continue to take up an increasing amount of time, cost large amounts of money and require endless efforts, not only …
