Rain and landslide cuts off road in Darjeeling, Darjeeling schools advance their puja holidays

Darjeeling, Sept. 26: Continuous rain in the hills for the past 48 hours prompted many schools to suspend classes today and others to advance their Puja vacation by three days.

A stretch of about 20 metres of the 18 Lebong Cart Road in Darjeeling caved in around 10.30 last night, disrupting traffic between the town and areas like Singamari and Lebong on the fringes and even to Jorethang in Sikkim.

Although there is an alternative route through the Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park to bypass the cave-in, St Joseph’s School (North Point) decided to close down for the Puja vacation today itself.

The Puja holiday was earlier scheduled from September 30.

“Even though there is an alternative route to reach our school, we thought it would be too much of an inconvenience to ask students to use that congested stretch. This is why we decided to advance the Puja vacation,” said Father Kinley Tshering, rector of North Point School in Singamari, around 3km from Darjeeling town. The day scholars come to school in buses or cars. Some of them also walk to school. Classes will resume after vacation on October 16, as scheduled.

Father Tshering said the parents of the boarders have been informed. The school has around 600 boarders from the hills, Siliguri, Calcutta, Bihar, Sikkim, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and even Thailand.

Mount Hermon School, which is situated in the same area as North Point, however, did not suspend classes today.

“If the rain persists we may think of closing down for a day or two,” said George Fernandez, principal of Mount Hermon.

Asked if the Puja holidays, scheduled from October 1, would be advanced, Fernandez said: “With the earthquake, then the landslide and the rains the general spirit is very low. I personally would have wanted to close down for vacation but again if we do so the parents will be inconvenienced as most of them have already booked tickets for October 1. Rescheduling their tickets during tourist season would be difficult.”

Mount Hermon authorities, however, said they might allow boarders from nearby areas like Sikkim to leave earlier if the rain persisted.

Many schools like Ramakrishna Siksha Parisad and St Robert’s Higher Secondary, located in the heart of the town, also suspended classes because of the rain.

Weather experts have warned that a low pressure had developed in the region and there could be more rain in the days to come

“A low pressure trough is hovering over north Bengal and adjoining Bihar at 5.8km above the sea level. This would cause heavy to very heavy rainfall in Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri and Cooch Behar districts in the next 24 hours,” Indranil Sengupta, the assistant meteorological officer of the Regional Met Office in Jalpaiguri, said.

The stretch of 18 Lebong Cart Road that caved in is likely to take almost a month to be restored. Most of the Darjeeling Tea gardens residing in the Lebong valley region are also cut off.

District magistrate Saumitra Mohan said: “Engineers from the public works department are trying to get the road temporarily restored but it will take about a month to permanently repair the stretch.”

Source: The Telegraph

NGO fills govt boots in fight against landslides

Kalimpong, Jan. 29: A few concerned residents, under the banner of Save the Hills, are trying to find ways to fight landslides in Kalimpong, a problem skirted by the powers-that-be.

Over the past two days, the residents hosted a team of students from the North Bengal University’s one-year post-graduate diploma programme in disaster management and gave them a detailed account of the havoc caused by landslides in Kalimpong in September last year.

The team had eight students, accompanied by the department head Sanjay Rana.

The team was taken to a few landslide-hit areas like Elainchikhop, Bhalukhop, Dalapchand and 14th Mile. Save the Hills also conducted a workshop where its president Praful Rao made a power-point presentation for the benefit of the students.

“Some of the students will incorporate what they have learnt during this field trip in their project reports, which they have to prepare in the second semester of their course,” said Rana.

The objective behind the visit, said Rana, was to enable the students to get a first-hand experience of landslides and gather technical inputs.

The students, on their part, said the visit was of immense benefit to them.

“Lack of drainage, haphazard construction and poor soil character seemed to be the main causes of the landslides. What was also noticeable was that the people were not sufficiently aware of the problem,” said Preeti Gurung, a student.

In fact, the students were so moved by Save the Hill’s work on landslides that some of them have made a commitment to support the NGO in whatever way they can.

“We will be writing to authorities concerned and, maybe, even hold a seminar on the issue in our university,” said Gurung.

Rana confirmed that he was toying with the seminar idea.

The NGO has expressed unhappiness over the complete lack of initiative from government agencies to tackle the problem.

“Despite writing to so many agencies, we have found no evidence of any preventive work being done on the ground. The situation remains exactly the same as it was in September. This is scary because the monsoon is only about four-five months away,” said Rao.

The NGO has been tirelessly campaigning about the threat since the September landslides. It has already conducted three workshops.

“Despite receiving little response from agencies concerned, we will keep espousing the cause because, quite simply, our future is at stake here,” said the president of the NGO.

On September 7, 2007, five persons had died in the Kalimpong subdivision after incessant rain triggered a series of landslides in the area.

Source: The Telegraph

Chowkidar died while saving people

Darjeeling : A 55-year-old chowkidar was struck down by landslide this morning, but not before he managed to save half a dozen lives from the debris that came tumbling down the hill.

Triggered by heavy overnight rain (167.30mm), rocks and mud had come sliding down to the road at Nalman Gaon in Lebong around 7.30am. Seikh Ahmed, a resident of the area, 7km from here, started alerting people when boulders followed the small rocks.

He managed to keep away two schoolchildren from the spot. Ahmed also waved frantically at a jeep, which was coming down the road.

Dhan Kumar Bhujel, the driver of the vehicle, was not sure what was happening and had slowed down. The next moment the jeep was swept off the road and would have fallen into the gorge had it not been for the house of one Loben Sherpa.

The jeep stood sandwiched between the debris and the house. The passengers of the vehicle — Mani Thapa, Sapnam Thapa and Roshan Tamang — escaped with minor injuries.

“We received a new lease of life because of this man (Ahmed). Had he bothered about his own safety, we probably would not have lived,” said the visibly shaken driver.

According to Bhujel, Ahmed died from the impact of the falling debris.

Ahmed’s one-storied wooden house too was covered with debris but his wife Saifal Begum has survived with minor injuries.

Four more persons from the area were injured.

Army personnel posted at Lebong Cantonment along with civil defence and fire brigade workers carried out the rescue operations.

Another landslide along Lebong Cart Road, 2km ahead of Nalman Gaon, had blocked the route and rescuers had to wade through the debris to reach the mishap site. The road was cleared later in the day with two excavators.

Nine houses have been partially damaged at Nalman Gaon and two more at Batasia, on the southern fringes of the town. One house was affected at Bhutia Busty below Chowrastha. Cracks have also appeared on a house in Takdha, 30km from here, while two houses were affected at Sukhipokhri, 23km away.

Debris also covered the toy train tracks in three places between Darjeeling and Ghoom, following which the services were suspended for today. National Highway 55 was also blocked at Paglajhora near Kurseong.

Source: The Telegraph