Extreme Weather
– Better Reporting or Prophetic Trend?

Extreme weather kills 168 in Kashmir
Ireland On-line

Avalanches and extreme cold in India’s portion of Kashmir have killed 168 people and left at least 212 others missing.

Police and soldiers pulled the bodies of 10 people from their homes today after an avalanche swept Ramsu village in India’s Jammu-Kashmir state.

At least 12 other people were missing in Ramsu in the frontier Doda district, 120 miles north of Jammu, the winter capital of the state.

Across the state in Srinagar, restaurant workers found the bodies of four colleagues who had been asphyxiated after they left a coal fire burning in their room to keep warm as they slept.

Heavy snow and low temperatures have gripped the Kashmir valley since last week. Avalanches and mud slides triggered by rain and snow have buried entire villages and collapsed houses across the state.

An army rescue team rescued six people in the remote village of Valtengu after trekking through hip-deep snow for more than 10 hours yesterday.

Three army helicopters were to begin dropping food packets and blankets in the area for rescue workers to distribute to stranded villagers.

The weather office said the cold spell was expected to continue.

“There will be snow or rain over the next few days but the worst is over,” said the director of the meteorological office in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu-Kashmir.

The intense cold was aggravated by power cuts as most parts of Srinagar city and the rest of the state remained without power for the fifth day running.

People kept warm by burning wood fires and coal stoves, but supplies of fuel were running out.

With the main highway linking Jammu and Srinagar with the rest of the country closed to traffic, and hundreds of trucks lined up along the highway, Kashmir has been hit by shortages of kerosene oil, gasoline, cooking gas, fresh vegetables and milk.