Himachal Pradesh: Three feared dead in flash flood

An elderly couple and their grandson were feared dead after their dhaba was swept away in a flash flood at a village in Shimla

Shimla: An elderly couple and their grandson were feared dead after their dhaba was swept away in a flash flood at a village here on Saturday morning, officials said.

Rescue work to trace the trio is underway in Badiyara village in the Rohru area where a flash flood was reported in the Laila rivulet, they added. The missing elderly couple, Roshan Lal and his wife Bhaga Devi, ran a dhaba in the village and their grandson Kartik had paid them a visit, the officials said. Following the flash flood, reports of damage to several houses and vehicles in Rohru have started pouring in, they added.

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Meanwhile, around 30 km from Rohru, one-metre deep cracks developed along the Bazaar Road at Khaltu Nullah in the Kotkhai tehsil here, dividing the market area into two, Shimla Deputy Commissioner Aditya Negi said on Saturday. As the cracks deepened due to incessant rains since Friday evening, three families residing in the area were shifted to a safer place, Negi said.

Following rains at Kotkhai, debris entered a hospital campus in Kotkhai, a retaining wall at the area”s main bus stand collapsed, a landslide occurred in front of the police station and the power line snapped, ADGP Satwant Atwal said in a tweet. The shopkeepers of Khaltu Nullah Bazaar have shifted their goods to temporary shelters after cracks developed and residents of the area have been shifted as a precautionary measure, Atwal said.

As the apple season begins, the apple growers in the villages adjoining the Khaltu Nullah market are also a worried lot as a landslide in the market could cut them off from the Guma-Chaila-Thoeg road that is used for the transportation of farm produce and other goods to Shimla and other prominent markets of the State.