Avalanches now common in Himalayas; CAG raps SASE for lack of capacity augmentation

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By Our Special Correspondent

New Delhi, April 1: The visible impact of climate change in India has been seen in the form of a growing number of incidents of avalanches in the Himalayan region. Last year 26 people lost their lives after being swept by an avalanche at the summit of Mount Draupadi Ka Danda II in Uttarakhand.

Several incidents of avalanches have been reported in the recent months in Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, besides Uttarakhand. The Himalayan region has also been witnessing incidents of flash floods following cloud burst as part of the abrupt weather change patterns seen in the hilly areas.

Snow and Avalanche Establishment (SASE) under the aegis of DRDO is responsible to provide avalanche forecasting support to the services, including advice on avalanche control measures. “Although SASE was aware in 2017 of the need to increase the number of Manual Observatories (MO)/Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) to improve forecasting accuracy, a comprehensive plan of action for the purpose was yet to be finalized,” the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has said in a report, which was submitted in both the Houses of Parliament on March 27 this year.

The top statutory auditor of the country said that “SASE was earlier generating avalanche forecasts at higher resolution, the same could not be continued after 2017 due to the non-procurement of the High-Performance Computing system to replace the old system”.

“Non-availability of trained personnel for collecting data at observatories also contributed to poor quality of data being collected and accuracy of forecasting. There were delays also in dissemination of the avalanche warnings. Further, a formalised mechanism for enabling systematic co-ordination between SASE and other specialised agencies such as India Meteorological Department (IMD) regarding data/research sharing to improve its capacity for avalanche and weather forecasting, was yet to be put in place,” noted the CAG in its report.

SASE took up projects for improving avalanche threat mitigation tools and techniques. Some of the prototypes were developed and tested successfully. However, they were not extended to the users for adoption leading to the continued dependence of the users on less effective conventional techniques for avalanche threat mitigation, noted the CAG in the report.