- White site: The Kedarnath shrine is located in such a place that, in winter, a single snowstorm can cause the accumulation of some two metres of snow and ice around it.
- 7 thousand cubic metres of snow can have an impact force of 85 tonnes/cubic metre
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According to scientific estimates, the loss of human lives in what the Uttarakhand chief minister called a “Himalayan tsunami” could be as high as 25,000 or more. That would be no exaggeration, say geologists who have studied the Himalayan region and prepared plans to better protect the ecologically sensitive region and its people from disasters such as the one that struck on June 16.
Glaciologists of the Geological Survey of India (GSI) have studied Kedarnath and the surrounding areas in great detail. With his team, Deepak Srivastava, a former director of GSI and an eminent glaciologist, has explored the region. The reasons they offer for what happened and for the scale of the tragedy are not...
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