Start Firming Up For the Monsoons Ahead

editorial:

Sections of the still-being-widened highway in North Sikkim are already turning into bogs with the pre-monsoon showers. The unusually consistent [and abundant] evening showers, even as they are unhealthy for the fields, should get everyone involved in any aspect of disaster mitigation concerned about what the later months, when the monsoons open up, hold for Sikkim. While road-connectivity problems are expected during monsoons, Gangtok should also consider shoring up the protective works installed for the pipelines carrying water to the Selep reservoir. These have collapsed in the past, and if the present weather is any indication, will be put under tremendous stress very soon. The weather pattern suggests that 2011 will record at least an above-normal monsoon and the crumbling tendency of recently constructed infrastructure [roads still in excavation stage for widening] should have everyone worried. Both, the highway expansion and the Ratey Chu supply line repairs, are less than season-old efforts and have a history of unnerving collapses behind them.
Granted, the rains can be very devastating, but surely, a State that receives ferocious downpours on a regular basis should have repairs and new infrastructure constructed with better reinforcement. Jhoras, ironically also called “storm water drains”, have seen protective works washed away by one rain, and every drizzle reminds Gangtok of the shoddy storm drains which run along the highway here.
Roads and water supply lines going down to cloud-bursts might be acceptable, but their collapsing under the coercion of the Nor’wester evening showers should be unacceptable, not just for the obvious imperilment it casts on surrounding residents, but also the sheer inconvenience it causes to everyone at large. Last year, the recently expanded highway collapsed at Burtuk at around this time of the year, slicing away a toilet attached to a building and damaging an attached plot of land. The least that the disaster mitigation agencies can do in preparation is visit all sites with recent history of monsoon-related damages and take a stock update; check whether the repairs commissioned there have been undertaken properly. Given that this is Sikkim, it would be wise to also confirm whether all the protective works directed have even been undertaken and start from there. Most people in the State will remember the rash of slides and road collapses which gripped Sikkim towards the end of the last monsoons. Entire villages were imperilled, extensive road sections lost to collapses and substantial damage caused. These are the material losses, the trauma suffered by the people remains under-reported. The more relaxed times of dry Winter months are already past and heavy clouds and their potential for destruction are back on the skyline. What Sikkim is receiving at present is only a teaser of the promise of the coming months. These should be received as reminders and the concerned agencies activated into pre-emptive measures. The viciousness of the last monsoons demands that everyone here takes stock properly and marks out the trouble-spots in advance and complete whatever is still left of the repairs and protective works. Plastic sheets, after all, can offer only so much stability which things start slipping away and this is why engineering deployed in the heavy monsoon hill states like Sikkim needs to be better adapted for the peculiar topographical and weather conditions here. That said, a fresh order for those huge sheets of plastic might also be well placed now.