Tuesday, 17 January 2023 | PNS | DEHRADUN/JOSHIMATH
To assess the damage and to monitor the cracks, the Central Building Research Institute (CBRI) Roorkee has installed crack meters on the buildings of the Joshimath city affected by the land subsidence. The state administration has so far made a damage assessment of 400 houses in the city. Interacting with the media persons at the State secretariat on Monday after returning from the disaster affected Joshimath, the secretary disaster management, Ranjit Sinha said that three seismic stations have been installed by the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology in Joshimath from which the data is being obtained. He informed that an amount of Rs 2.85 crore has been distributed to 190 affected families as advance for displacement by the state government. Sinha said that the underground discharge of water which was 540 litre per minute (LPM) on January 6 has now reduced to 163 LPM.
He said there are a total 615 rooms in the temporary relief camp of Joshimath with a capacity of 2190 people and 491 rooms in Pipalkoti camp with a capacity of 2205 people. Under the relief amount distributed to the affected, at the rate of Rs 5000 per family, a total of Rs 3.65 lakh has so far been distributed to the 73 affected families for domestic relief material. An amount of Rs 13.00 lakh has been distributed to ten families for completely damaged buildings.
Sinha added that so far the number of buildings in which cracks have been noticed is 849 and the survey work is in progress. He informed that one area has been declared unsafe in Gandhinagar, two in Singhdhar, five in Manoharbagh and seven in Sunil. A total of 165 Buildings are located in unsafe areas. 237 families have been temporarily displaced in view of security and the number of displaced family members now stands at 800.
Meanwhile, on the orders of the district magistrate (DM) of Chamoli Himanshu Khurana, the people in most of the houses of ward number one, four, five and seven have vacated their houses. The demolition of the two precariously placed and highly damaged hotels in Joshimath continued on Monday.
The secretary rural development and animal husbandry BVRC Purushottam inspected the pre fabricated for the cattle in the Joshimath city. The department has started preparing cow sheds made from these prefabricated huts for the disaster affected families in the safe places of Marwadi and Sunil wards. The secretary directed that these sheds should be installed at a fast pace so that the cattle can be shifted there.
