Cracks in houses, jittery locals block NH for 8 hrs | India News – Times of India

Advertisements


DEHRADUN: Thousands of anxious residents of Joshimath, where houses have been developing large cracks, blocked national highway –58 for eight hours on Thursday morning. They also held a ‘chakka jam’ seeking immediate rehabilitation of the affected families and stopping work at the under-construction Vishnugad-Tapovan hydropower project of National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), which they blamed for the hillside’s weakening. The locals have been claiming that Joshimath town is facing subsidence problems due to a punctured tunnel of the NTPC project, which goes beneath the town.
Meanwhile, in order to deal with the impending problem of providing alternative shelter to people evacuating their houses, the Chamoli district administration on Thursday asked NTPC and Hindustan Construction Company Limited (HCC) to prepare 2000 pre-fabricated houses each which will be used for accommodating the affected families.

People in Uttarakhand's Joshimath protest as houses develop cracks

People in Uttarakhand’s Joshimath protest as houses develop cracks

The district administration will earmark the land where the prefabricated houses will come up, a government order issued by additional district magistrate (ADM) Abhishek Tripathi said. Meanwhile, the situation in Joshimath is worsening every passing day with families leaving their houses and being shifted to identified buildings. Till date, 38 families have been shifted and relocated to safer places, officials said.“Till Wednesday, 29 families were shifted out of their houses. Nine more families left their houses on Thursday. Four families were shifted to municipality buildings while one each was shifted to a gurdwara in Joshimath, irrigation colony and tourist hostel on Auli road,” Nand Kishore Joshi, district disaster management officer, told TOI.
As on date, 561 houses across all nine municipal wards have reported minor to major cracks. Two hotels have been closed and nine buildings have been identified with a capacity to accommodate 385 people in 79 rooms, seven halls and one auditorium, according to information provided by the district administration.





Source link