Landslide Closes Karakoram Highway in North Pakistan
March 12, 2020
While world consideration is focussed upon tremor assaulted Haiti, another national fiasco has nearly gone unnoticed by the world. On January fourth, 2010, a gigantic area of the precarious inclines of the Palmir mountains gave way causing an immense avalanche that shut down the Karakoram Highway in Northern Pakistan and decimated the greater part of the town of Attabad in the Upper Hunza valley.
In excess of 20 individuals in Attabad and close by towns are known to have kicked the bucket and there are still individuals unaccounted for. An obscure number of harmed have been moved to emergency clinics in the close by towns of Aliabad and Karimabad.
The avalanche has totally hindered the Hunza River and a dam is shaping that currently reaches out as much as twelve kilometers towards the Gojal valley. Multiple kilometers of the Karakoram Highway is totally annihilated and is under meters of rubble, as per a nearby representative, Zulfiqar Ali Khan.
The avalanche was gigantic to such an extent that it has obstructed the Karakoram Highway, situated over the Khunjrav River, at inverse side of Attabad. Local people report thunder like sounds and that gigantic dust storms spread over the whole Upper Hunza valley, on occasion making it hard to see.
Spots of love, a public venue, a school, many private houses, cows sheds, fields, trees and plantations have been leveled by the avalanche, making hopeless harm the economy of this little villa. Nourishment, fuel and medication are hard to come by and Army helicopters are being utilized to ship in crisis supplies. Around 25,000 individuals live in the cut off region. The Pakistan Red Cross is presently attempting to give out crisis apportions yet the salvage endeavor is being hampered by troublesome access to the territory. A limited quantity of provisions is being acquired from China over the famous Kunjarab Pass however this course is risky throughout the winter as it is liable to torrential slides. The mountains in the region are famously insecure because of the closeness of the covering Indian and Himalayan plates.
The consistently expanding dam is causing worries that it might in the long run burst its banks and cause demolition further down the Hunza Valley. Assessments that the spring melt will quicken the stream into the extending lake is causing fears of a wash away by late May. Various low lying up-stream towns are under danger from the lake and an enormous number of families have been cleared.
Down-stream networks and scaffolds are likewise in danger. Three bulldozers have been acquired to uncover a channel to give a waterway and some alleviation from the weight. Pakistan FWO and Chinese specialists have shown up at the scene to direct the venture, yet with the water level ascending at multiple feet daily, this is currently a test of skill and endurance.
There has not yet been a great opportunity to get to the effect upon the region yet the Karakoram Highway is the main vehicle hall through the north of Pakistan, Trade and the travel industry is probably going to be genuinely influenced and it isn’t known when the thruway will be re-opened. The structure of the interstate was a gigantic designing accomplishment. It was worked by Pakistan and Chinese architects who in parts, shot a street out of sheer overhanging bluffs.
My better half and I voyaged this interstate by jeep in 2007 and around then thought that it was one of the most sensational streets that we’d at any point gone over. We invested a ton of the energy holding our breath. The narrative of our movements are recorded in the soft cover Following Marco Polo’s Silk Road distributed by Marco Polo Press.
