India News | Major Landslide Near Paonta Sahib in HP, Nobody Hurt
Get latest articles and stories on India at LatestLY. To the horror of those watching from the sidelines, a massive portion of a mountainside crashed Friday destroying a 300-metre stretch of the road to Paonta Sahib in Himachal Pradesh.
Shimla, July 30 (PTI) To the horror of those watching from the sidelines, a massive portion of a mountainside crashed Friday destroying a 300-metre stretch of the road to Paonta Sahib in Himachal Pradesh.
A video clip on social media showed chunks of earth and rocks sliding down. A long section of the road is seen crumpling, being carried away be the debris from the mountainside.
An eyewitness is heard telling someone to back their vehicle. Another man says that the landslide has “taken a bus”.
But no casualties were reported in the landslide on National Highway 707, a little less than 30 kilometres from Paonta Sahib in Sirmaur district.
Sirmaur deputy commissioner Ram Kumar Gautam said travellers were alerted when they saw a minor landslide first and stopped their vehicles.
A major tragedy was averted. The DC said luckily there is no habitation or fields around the spot near Badwas in Kamran tehsil.
Paonta Sahib, which houses a Sikh shrine, is still accessible. Traffic has been diverted to a road passing through Uttarakhand's Vikasnagar from Kaffota.
Gautam said manned barricades have now been set up 200 metres ahead of the destroyed 300-metre section of the road on both sides
It will take at least a fortnight to reconstruct the road, the DC said. A Geological Survey of India (GSI) team has visited the spot to study the situation.
Rains this week in Himachal Pradesh have triggered other, smaller landslides as well.
In Lahaul-Spiti, a cloudburst on Tuesday killed nine people and seven others were reported missing. Over 200 people are still stranded in the district.
On Friday, officials also reported that three trekkers are missing in the district.
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)