Short #Thread:
Though heavy rainfall is the trigger, our construction practices of where and how are the biggest causes behind some of the most devastating landslides that are costing both lives and money for us.
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Image shows a relatively well vegetated hill slope in #Manipur in 2009
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When a railway line was built along the slope (alongwith many roads), lots of slope cutting, vegetation clearances took place in the region.
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And the construction continued..
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So when heavy rainfall happened, the slope failed creating a landslide with many people dead
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Similar case: New Haflong station in #Assam
Slope cutting for both the railway line and the access roads were done.
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And then resulted in landslides when the place received heavy rainfall
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One should note that, it is not just the slope cutting that is a problem but also with the narrow box culverts that are provided for side streams. IMO these are extremely small & would get choked which would destabilize the land above & would also overflow
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And also retaining walls of this size wont work in these situations anyway.
Unless we change our construction practices of where we build & how we build with respect to slope cutting, vegetation clearance, retaining walls & most importantly culverts for streams, we would continue facing devastating landslides. It wud be another place, another time
End
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