“On 7 February 2021, I got news of a disaster having occurred in Chamoli. I was in a town called Gopeshwar, Uttarakhand and could rush to the site immediately. I knew that Chamoli is a disaster-prone zone, but I had no idea of the magnitude of the disaster,” begins IAS officer Swati Bhadoria, District Magistrate, Chamoli. She is one of the four female administrators—which includes DIG Garhwal range Neeru Garg, Indo-Tibetan Border Force (ITBP) DIG Aparna Kumar, and State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) DIG Riddhim Aggarwal—who are anchoring the rescue and relief operations in the Himalayan terrains.
That fateful morning of 7 February a horrific disaster reminiscent of the 2013 Kedarnath tragedy occurred when a huge glacier burst in the Tapovan area of Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district in the Garhwal Himalayas.
The Better India caught up with two of the officers—IAS officer Swati Bhadoria, DM Chamoli, and DIG Garhwal Range Neeru Garg—to get their perspectives of the…