Tag: debris

In This Himachal Village, Debris From Flash Floods Has Made Half the Farmland Unusable

‘We have no role in disturbing the climate. We are living peacefully, away from the daily hustle and bustle of urban life. But it is us who are suffering disproportionately from the effects of the changing weather,’ says one villager.

Chandigarh: Padma Chhoing’s family owns 34 bighas (seven acres) of land in Gue village in Himachal’s Lahaul & Spiti district, nestled in the high reaches of the Himalayas. From Gue, India’s border with China is not far away.

Speaking to The Wire, Chhoing said that they can only grow one crop a year and green pea farming is the only livelihood source in the village. A decade ago, their income from pea farming was approximately Rs 4 lakh a year.

“Now, it has halved as debris – boulders, stones, sand and mud – from flash floods has destroyed almost half of our agricultural land and made it unfit for farming,” he said.

According to Chhoing, there is now a layer of debris, eight or nine feet deep, on the affected portion of their fields, making the land near impossible to recover.

In the winter of 2016, Chhering Tandup, Chhoing’s uncle, spent almost Rs 60,000 to recover the part of their eight-acre field that was destroyed by a flood of debris in 2013. However, another spell the next year wiped their efforts away.

In their recent representation, submitted online to National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) last week, they noted that almost 17 hectares of farmland have turned barren in the village; almost half of their total cultivable land.

Chhoing told The Wire that flash floods in the region were not very frequent in the 20th century. Agricultural land was spread across mountains too. However, things took a turn for the worse in the last 10-15 years as the incidence of floods increased rapidly.

“Floods in the years 2006, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2017 and 2020 took a heavy toll on the village and on the livelihoods of the 40-plus families living here,” Chhoing said.

Also read: Floods in Bihar Destroyed 7.54 Lakh Hectares of Agricultural Land This Year

He and the others in the village, who belong to Bodh tribe, hold climate change responsible for their current situation.

Chhunit Chhering, another villager, told The Wire that earlier, rainfall in their region was scant. Now, the incessant rainfall in the area has disturbed its whole ecosystem.

Villagers walk over the debris that once was a lush green field in Gue village. Photo: Special arrangement

“We fear that it is cloud bursts that often lead to debris and rock falls,” Chhering said. “During the monsoon season, we have to take shelter in and around the monastery area that is located at a height.”

The tale of the monastery

There is an interesting tale linked to the village monastery. In 1975, the mummified body of a monk was excavated, following an earthquake in the area, and was later placed inside the monastery.

The monk was identified as Sangha Tenzin of Tibet who is said to have died 525 years ago in this very area.

It is believed that the Tenzin undertook a slow starvation under a slow, natural self-mummification process. With his mouth open and his teeth visible, the monk, according to villagers, symbolises the ‘Living Buddha’.

Villagers believe that he sacrificed himself to save the village from a curse. Ever since his body was recovered, the locals have revered him deeply. Twice a day, an earthen lamp is lit in his honour.

The villagers often pray with the hope that the monk will rescue them from the impacts of the rapidly deteriorating ecosystem of the village. There’s even a special prayer meet held in his temple before every monsoon season where the locals pray for the safety of their fields and houses.

The present curse of climate change-induced flash floods, however, appears to be a complex hurdle to overcome.

Despite prayers, floods have not stopped

“We have no role in disturbing the climate. We are living peacefully, away from the daily hustle and bustle of urban life,” Chhoing rued. “We have no industry that pollutes the surroundings. Our whole life revolves around farming and grazing domestic animals. But it is us who are suffering disproportionately from the effects of the changing weather, simply because the people in the plains hardly bother.”

A tractor submerged in a field after flash floods in 2020. Photo: special arrangement.

As these floods persistently eat into the local families’ livelihood options, their economic and social impacts are huge. With their incomes shrinking, the families have less money to spend on the education of their children.

The villagers are forced to look for new avenues of employment outside the village. Many are taking up petty jobs as labourers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA); some are even driving taxis in order to sustain their families.

Kunga Angchuk, who is forced to work as taxi driver in Spiti’s Kaza town, said that he lost around 15 bighas of land in flash floods, which resulted in the financial hardships for his family.

“Our minds are often restless, worrying that floods in the future may wash away everything and leave us in peril. That is why it has become a tendency among villagers to find jobs elsewhere,” he said.

There is also a social aspect to these changing realities. Chhoing told The Wire that his older brother, also residing in the village, has had difficulty in finding a suitable match for marriage, despite the fact that he has a job as a government teacher.

“It is because people of other villages are afraid of marrying their daughters into flood-hit villages like ours. They are also aware of the fact that landholdings in our village has gone down and therefore, the futures of our families are at risk,” he said

Fights for rehabilitation still on

Since 2010, the village has been pushing for the rehabilitation of the flood victims. The villagers, with the help of the local administration, found 25 hectares of land near their village in the Dhar Karjamba (‘Shalachey’ in the local language) area

This location, they said, would be safe from floods in the summer and avalanches in winter, and it will be enough to rehabilitate all those who lost their agricultural land to floods back in Gue.

The new location, villagers believe, will also act as a contingency. If tomorrow, the entirety of Gue is claimed by these floods, they would have a place to permanently settle.

However, the villagers later discovered that the state revenue department hardly owns any vacant land in Lahaul and Spiti, outside of villages and towns.

Most of the vacant land in this district comes under the forest department, despite Spiti being a cold desert. According to locals, vegetation in the region can only been seen around the areas inhabited by humans.

As per the information obtained by the villagers under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the Himachal government, in 2015, had approached the additional principal chief conservator of forest of the Union government for the diversion of the 25-hectares land for the rehabilitation of the flood-hit Gue villagers.

Later, as per the reply from the Union forest ministry, the proposal was rejected, saying that the Union government a does not allow for the diversion of forest land for the purpose of rehabilitation.

Also read: Is Environment Ministry Miffed That Forest Conservation Act Isn’t Pro-profit?

District forest officer (Lahaul and Spiti) Hardev Singh Negi told The Wire that there is no provision under the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 for the transfer of forest land in the names of individual. This is why the proposal was rejected, even as the state government, as well as the local MLA, had rigorously followed the proposal.

In their latest representation to the NCST and the Himachal chief minister’s grievance cell, dated April 17, 2022, the villagers argued that since the Bodh tribe living in Gue is a notified tribal community under Schedule 5 of the constitution, the governor of Himachal Pradesh has special powers to waive off the relevant provisions of Forest (Conservation) Act and transfer the land to the villagers for the rehabilitation.

Tanzin Tandup, president of the Youva Mandal Sangha Club in Gue, told The Wire that they would personally meet both the chief minister and the governor in Shimla next week and push for the waiver of the relevant provisions of the Act.

He said rehabilitation is important not only for their livelihood, but also to for the villagers to sustain themselves culturally and socially.

“Being a tribal community, we have been given certain privileges by Indian constitutions, which authorities must exercise for our survival. If government help is delayed, we will be doomed,” he said

“We cannot convert these banjar (unproductive) lands into cultivable land because of the large stones and mud. The flood may turn to our homes as well one day, as the source is at the top of our village,” Tandup added.

According to him, if the villagers are rehabilitated to the identified place, Dhar Karjampa, they will take care of it and ensure afforestation and greenery.

Russian ASAT Test Debris Will Threaten Space Missions for Years, Say Scientists

Experts have thus far identified 216 unique pieces of debris created by the test – a expected to grow significantly as more data becomes available.

New Delhi: The thousands of pieces of trackable debris generated by Russia’s anti-satellite (ASAT) missile test will pose a threat to future space missions and it will be decades before they are fully gone, scientists have said.

On November 15, Russia destroyed a defunct Soviet-era satellite called Tselina-D – a.k.a. Cosmos-1408. The test generated more than 1,500 trackable pieces of debris in low-Earth orbit (LEO). Ground instruments can continuously track only objects that are the size of a softball or larger.

They can’t keep track of smaller pieces, and the potential population of such pieces could mean the total number of debris pieces from the test could be much higher.

After Russia conducted the test, the seven-member crew of the International Space Station (ISS) – four US astronauts, a German astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts – was directed to take shelter for two hours as a precaution.

An ASAT weapon is a missile that is launched from the ground and can target and destroy assets orbiting the planet at various altitudes.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken condemned the missile test as “reckless and irresponsible”.

Data to date suggests that there are around 20,000 objects trackable pieces of debris in orbit around Earth – with Russia’s test expected to increase that figure by as much as 10%.

Ed Lu, the founder of LeoLabs, a startup that has said it can track debris as small as half a golf ball, told National Geographic “We are counting many, many objects – we’re not even sure how many there are yet, but it’s a lot.”

In a tweet, LeoLabs also said it has thus far identified 216 unique objects created by the test, adding that the number is expected to  grow significantly as more data become available.

Astronomical telescopes on the ground have captured images of some shattered pieces as well. According Numerica Corp, a company that tracks space debris, the pieces are spreading in many directions.

Scientist Hugh Lewis said that the debris is expected to pose a long-term threat. Based on a simulation of the test he conducted, Lewis said it would take “several years before most of the fragments … re-entered [Earth’s atmosphere] and decades before they were all gone”.

After India conducted its own ASAT test in March 2019, the space community had expressed similar apprehensions – that the debris would take years to disintegrate. National Geographic noted, however, that only three trackable pieces from India’s ASAT test currently remain in orbit. This is still contrary to the Indian government’s own claims that the pieces would all reenter Earth’s atmosphere in three months. Untrackable pieces are likely to still be in orbit.

This is still a big problem: satellites orbit Earth at high speeds, so even small fragments can cause noticeable damage upon impact because the relative velocity would be very high.

In May this year, for example, the ISS was hit by a metal fragment “no bigger than the width of an eyelash”, punching a hole in one of its robotic arms.

An object in orbit can reenter the atmosphere when atmospheric drag slows it down to such an extent that it no longer has the momentum to maintain the shape of its orbit, and begins to descend towards Earth.

Russia acknowledges test

On November 16, the Russian defence ministry confirmed – and thus also acknowledged – that it had “successfully conducted a test”. According to The Guardian, defence minister Sergei Shoigu, however, denied that the test posed any threat to space activity.

It also appears to be the case that Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, did not know about the test in advance, according to National Geographic. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson also said he had reason to believe that Roscosmos hadn’t been informed, saying, “They’re probably just as appalled as we are.”

The European Space Agency has also criticised Russia for the test. “Our models show an increase in probability of a collision in low Earth orbit of five percent,” Philippe Baptiste, head of the French space agency CNES, told Space News.

Thierry Breton, the EU commissioner in charge of EU space policy, tweeted on Tuesday to “join the strongest condemnations expressed against the test conducted by Russia on Monday.”

“The launch poses a major risk to our astronauts currently on the International Space Station and has triggered emergency procedures to protect them,” he added.

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said that for the next few years, “there’s going to be an enhanced risk of collision” in LEO as a result of the test.

“Making unnecessary debris in LEO is bad. Making unnecessary debris in LEO when we’re vastly increasing the number of active LEO satellites is super-bad,” McDowell said, referring to the fact that over 90,000 new satellites are expected to enter orbit in the next few years.

According to National Geographic, since Cosmos-1408 was orbiting 480 km above ground, it could pose a risk to SpaceX’s constellation of Starlink satellites, which provide wireless broadband internet services. These satellites orbit at an altitude of 547 km.

“You’ve got thousands of targets in the form of the Starlink satellites, and if you manage to hit a few, now you’ve got dead Starlink satellites passing through this crowded region,” McDowell said.

In a statement, the Secure World Foundation condemned Russia’s test, saying deliberately creating “orbital debris of this magnitude is extremely irresponsible”.

“Orbital debris poses an indiscriminate risk to everyone’s satellites in orbit, endangering critical space-based services we all rely on, as well as the human lives on the International Space Station and China’s Tiangong Space Station,” the foundation said.

It also called upon the US, Russia, China and India – the four countries that have tested ASAT weapons so far – to declare “unilateral moratoriums on further testing of their antisatellite weapons” and work with other countries towards solidifying an international ban on destructive ASAT testing.

Of these four countries, India has conducted one ASAT test and China at least two. Both the US and Russia have conducted multiple tests – from as far back as the 1950s (in Russia’s case as the Soviet Union).

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 forbade the installation of nuclear weapons in Earth orbit, in the context of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union. But weapons have since become much more sophisticated in the way they use the space environment.

For example, Financial Times reported in October this year that China may have tested an advanced hypersonic fractional orbital bombardment system in August.

This is a missile system with a nuclear warhead that is launched from the ground, enters orbit and stays there. When it is required at a later time, it fires special motors to de-orbit right away into the atmosphere and bear down on its target, giving the target little response time.

Tamil Nadu: 2 Killed as Building Collapses After Heavy Rains

The single-storey building crumbled on Sunday night and eight persons, including two in the ground floor, were trapped in the debris.

Coimbatore: Two persons, one a woman, were killed after having been trapped a building that collapsed in the city due to heavy rains accompanied by strong winds. Five others were rescued, police said on Monday.

The single-storey building on Chettiveedhi (Chetti Street) suddenly collapsed on Sunday night. Eight persons, including two in the ground floor, were trapped in the debris, at around 10.30 pm.

Police and Fire and Rescue personnel toiled hard to clear the debris and managed to pull out those who were trapped, while the District Collector K. Rajamani and Police Commissioner Sumit Saran monitored the rescue operations.

The rescued include a six-year-old child and search is on for another, they said.

The city experienced heavy rains accompanied with strong winds from evening till midnight.

(PTI) 

20 Bodies Recovered From Landslip Site in Kerala; Search to Locate Missing Persons Continues

Two teams of the National Disaster Response Force initiated search and rescue operations on Saturday morning.

Idukki (Kerala): At least 20 bodies have been recovered  from the debris of the landslides that flattened a row of 20 houses of tea estate workers in the high range Idukki district in Kerala, as efforts were underway amid continuing rains to locate those missing.

The picturesque landscape of Pettimudi was flattened into a rough patch of boulders and mud with parts of asbestos and tin sheets seen scattered around.

Two teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) have initiated search and rescue operations on Saturday morning.

“On Friday night we had recovered two bodies. Today we retrieved two more. With this the toll has gone up to 20. There was some confusion regarding the total number of persons at the location at that particular point of time. It seems like some people were not present and some had come visiting,” Idukki district collector H. Dinesh told PTI.

As per the records available with the district administration, 46 people are still missing. He added that 12 people were rescued on Friday and are receiving treatment.

“Two teams of NDRF, besides the police and fire force officials are conducting search operations. They are working despite the bad weather that has affected the communication services and the electricity in the region..,” Devikulam Sub- collector Prem Krishnan told the media.

The incident is said to have occurred early on Friday morning when a huge mound of earth fell on the “row houses” and two children and five women were among the deceased, most of whom were plantation workers from neighbouring Tamil Nadu.

In the four-month-long Southwest monsoon season, which began in June first week, Kerala has reported a total of 51 deaths till Thursday night due to various incidents of drowning, landslides, and tree fall.

Meanwhile, the weatherman on Saturday issued a red alert for four districts in the state, namely the disaster-hit Idukki, Wayanad, Thrissur and Palakkad district.

According to the State Disaster Management Authority, Kerala received an average rainfall of 95 mm in the last 24 hours while Vadakara in Kozhikoderecorded 32.7 centimeters of rain, the heaviest in the state.

Vaythiri in Wayanad received 19.3 cms of rain while Peerumedu in Idukki district 18.5 cms.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) also issued Orange alert on August 8 to eight districts including Pathanamthitta, Alappuzha, Kottayam, Ernakulam, Malappuram, Kozhikode.

Thealert is also issued on August 9 to Malappuram, Kozhikode, Wayanad, Kannur, Kasaragod and Idukki.

Yellow alert was issued to other districts on Saturday and Sunday.

Four Months After ASAT Test, 40% of Debris Still in Orbit

India had said the debris would decay within 45 days of the test but 39 of the 101 tracked objects are still in orbit.

New Delhi: Four months after India successfully tested its anti-satellite (ASAT) capabilities, experts tracking the debris created by the event have reported that 40% of it has still not decayed. India had claimed after the test that the debris would decay within 45 days after the event.

After NASA administrator Jim Bridenstein claimed that debris from the ASAT test threatened the International Space Station (ISS), India denied the claim. Chairman of Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO) Satheesh Reddy said the mission, codename Shakti conducted on March 27, was carefully planned to minimise the amount of debris generated, adding that it would decay within 45 days.

However, experts tracking the debris have found that not to be the case. In mid-June, as The Wire reported, one of those experts Marco Langbroek, claimed that “92 larger debris pieces from the test” had been catalogued and that half of them “were still orbiting”.

Now, another expert, Jonathan McDowell, has found that 122 days after the test, 39 of 101 catalogued objects are still in orbit. This means that around 40% of the debris is still in orbit.

On Twitter, he posted a chart tracking the orbit decay plot of the debris generated.

In another tweet, McDowell said that the highest object is expected to stay in orbit “till next spring”.

The ASAT test was conducted at an altitude of about 300 km, where it would not endanger any other satellite, the explosion pushed fragments into the upper reaches of the low-Earth orbit. This led NASA to warn that the ISS could be threatened by the debris, apart from other experts also raising concerns.

In May, Longbroek wrote in a blog post that the mission was “conducted in a less responsible way than originally claimed.” Some of the debris generated by test had much longer orbital lifetimes – in come cases up to 10-times longer, he wrote.

These fragments ended up at much higher altitudes than what the Indian government has been willing to admit, thus becoming a potential threat to satellites in all orbital inclinations at these altitudes.

Also Read: India’s ASAT Capability Has Been Around for Some Time Now

The missile that was tested is a three-stage rocket and has a range of up to 1,000 km. This allows it to target most low-Earth orbit satellites. As The Wire has reported, Reddy stated that the test was conducted to intercept a satellite at about 280 km to minimise the threat of space debris. The missile has the ability to target satellites travelling at over 7.5 km/s (with relative velocities around 10 km/s for satellites in low-Earth orbit).

Reddy also said the entire operation, from identifying the satellite, launching the missile to tracking and destroying it, was automated because of the high precision and control demand.