1: Flash floods have left the residents of Chishoti village in a pall of gloom after people lost their loved ones in the cloudburst that also caused extensive damage to property.
2: Rescue and search work remained underway with fresh bodies being recovered on Saturday.
3: 14 people have died while four others remain missing in Chishoti, the starting point for the Machail Mata yatra.
A gushing flow of water sent boulders crashing down from the hill and swept away the 11-year-old daughter of Sati Devi in Chishoti village of Kishtwar district.Tears welled up in Devi’s eyes at the mention of the August 14 cloudburst, which claimed the lives of her daughter and father and left several other relatives missing or dead.
On Thursday, flash floods caused by the cloudbursts left a trail of devastation all around the village and tore down the house of 35-year-old Devi's father, where her daughter was present when the disaster struck.
It was a normal day for people like Devi. Busy in her mundane chores, she was helping out her brother at his eatery to serve the pilgrims who were to head out on an uphill trek to a temple high in the Himalayas.
The pilgrims visit the region for the Machail Mata yatra at Pader in Kishtwar. They had just begun crossing a bridge near the eatery run by Devi’s brother, when a sudden surge of water swept away homes and carried residents along with it.
Devi's paternal home suffered extensive damage, a fate shared by many other homes there.
Inside the mud house of one of their relatives, Devi spoke through tears. “I have lost everything. I am devastated.”
The flash floods that struck Chishoti village at around 11: 45 AM left 14 people dead while four remain missing. At least 60 people have died in total, including pilgrims. As of Sunday, 87 were missing.
As the rescue operations progressed, caverns of debris were being scouted by the Army personnel and government disaster response teams to search for the bodies. Dismembered bodies or simply the torn away body parts were recovered from the site in the process.
Most of the pilgrims were swept away by the sudden deluge while eating inside small eateries in the hilly village. Houses crumbled under the weight of the slush, while some already weakened structures threatened to cave in. Damaged cars and scattered two-wheelers lay strewn across the small village.
A body recovered from the debris remained unidentified as its head was cut off, while another recovered earlier on Saturday morning was draped in a cloth.
Devi’s brother Hari Singh said that his niece and two pilgrims were in their house to meet his father Thakur Chand, the founder of the organization that carried the traditional mace for the yatra. They were all swept away.
Devi’s mother Ram Devi too was badly injured with her face swollen and her legs bruised. The floods washed away Devi’s aunt and cousin as well.
Recalling the devastation, Singh said that before the floods wreaked havoc, he had been outside his house, working at the eatery alongside his brothers.
“No amount of consolation can heal the wounds of my sister. It has been a difficult moment for us to cremate our loved ones," said Singh. "We have not been able to recover the body of my cousin from under the debris," he added.
An erstwhile bustling Chishoti was strangely quiet now as people sifted through the rubble to search for their loved ones, while many families remained heartbroken as the bodies were taken on stretchers and handed out to the next of kin.
The floods left a young Mandeep Singh sobbing too. He lost his mother to the disaster, washed away as a pile of rocks slipped down the long stream, where the woman ran a water mill to eke out a living.
Visibly shocked, Mandeep recalled that his mother was busy with her routine of grinding grain into flour when the whole stream swelled up and took her with it. The stream now remains filled with piles of slush.
“We are very poor; my mother was running the water mill and people would give some flour or grains in return for the work. That is how we ran the family,” said Mandeep, looking gloomily at the stream, where several stranded pilgrims from Machail carefully trudged across a makeshift wooden bridge in search of safer ground. “My mother was swept away cruelly by the stream."
