Himalayan glacier breaks in India, hitting dams and killing 14, with 170 missing

Indian authorities launched a search operation on Sunday after part of a mountain glacier broke, sending a massive flood of water and debris slamming into two dams and damaging a number of homes. At least 14 people were killed and 170 remain missing.

The flood was caused when a portion of Nanda Devi glacier broke off in Tapovan area of the northern state of Uttarakhand on Sunday morning. A video shared by officials and taken from the side of steep hillside shows a wall of water surging into one of the dams and breaking it into pieces with little resistance before continuing to roar downstream.

The Rishiganga hydropower plant was destroyed, while the Dhauliganga hydropower was damaged, said Vivek Pandey, a spokesman for paramilitary Indo Tibetan Border Police. Both are on the Alaknanda River, which flows from the Himalayan mountains to the Ganges River.

Ravi Bejaria, a government spokesman, said some houses were also damaged in the flooding.

Officials said when the glacier broke it sent water trapped behind it as well as mud and other debris surging down the mountain and into other bodies of water. An advisory was issued urging people living on the banks of the Alaknanda River to move to safer places immediately.

“Everything was swept away, people, cattle and trees,” Sangram Singh Rawat, a former village council member of Raini, the site closest to the glacier, told local media.

Another resident, Dinesh Negi, said: “It all started sometime around 10 in the morning. We heard a bang, which shook our village. We knew something wrong had happened. We could see the fury of the river.”

Some 400 soldiers have been deployed to the site in the remote mountains, state authorities said.

“We expect to carry on operations for the next 24 to 48 hours, ” said Satya Pradhan, the chief of the National Disaster Response Force.

Authorities emptied two dams further down the river to stop the floodwaters from reaching towns of Haridwar and Rishikesh, where popular tourist spots on the banks of the Ganges River were shut and all boating activities were stopped. The Himalayan area has a chain of power projects on the Alaknanda River and its tributaries.

“We heard that a glacier had broken and people feared water levels would rise,” said Prince Chawla, a boat owner in Rishikesh. “But as of now, the water level hasn’t really risen too much here.”

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a tweet said he was “constantly monitoring the unfortunate situation”. He added: “India stands with Uttarakhand and the nation prays for everyone’s safety there.”

In 2013, thousands of people were killed in Uttarakhand after heavy rains triggered landslides and floods, washing away thousands of houses and roads and cutting communication links in many parts of the state.

Additional reporting by Reuters, Associated Press