It was around 1.30 pm on August 5, when after consistent rains, the residents of Dharali, a picturesque village in Uttarakhand’s Uttarkashi district, began fearing the worst: a disastrous flash flood.

Mohammad Shoaib, a 21-year-old welder from Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh, was in Dharali’s market area, waiting to pick up three of his co-workers in a car, when suddenly he heard people from the nearby Mukhba village and from Dharali, settled a little higher up and away from the market, screaming, shouting and whistling. They were warning everyone below to run for their lives as they saw a flash flood approaching Dharali.

With his co-workers nowhere in sight, Shoaib, who, amidst the screams and whistles, could also hear the loud rumbles and thuds of the incoming flash flood, started the car and sped through Dharali at about 70km-80 km per hour.

When he stopped and looked back, the entire market area behind him had either been swept away in the flash flood or buried under the huge amounts of sediment and boulders that Kheer Gad, or Kheer Ganga – a Himalayan stream passing through Dharali – brought down with it. He had escaped the flood by barely a second or two.

Despite several days of post-disaster rescue efforts...

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