On March 2, 2025, the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) camp at Mana-Badrinath, Chamoli district in Uttarakhand, witnessed a devastating avalanche that killed at least eight people. The

avalanche in Uttarakhand

mishap initiated an enormous rescue drive with officials marooned in residential complexes comprising containers. At the time of the accident, the camp accommodated approximately 54 staff members. According to the reports, 46 of the labourers were recovered alive, and bodies have been recovered, with ongoing rescue efforts.

The

Uttarakhand avalanche

caught the BRO camp and buried the workers in their tents. Despite day and night rescue operations, eight workers' bodies were retrieved and four bodies were subsequently retrieved, increasing the number of deaths. As per BBC reports, 46 workers were rescued with most displaying signs of injury but still alive.
The avalanche had taken place when the weather was not favourable, and there was rain as well as heavy snowfall to impede the rescue efforts. On Friday, the rescue efforts were suspended owing to unfavorable weather. When it cleared on Sunday, the rescue team resumed their efforts to identify any other survivors. The situation is still tense as the rescue teams continue to have to deal with difficult terrain and unfavorable weather.

An avalanche is a natural disaster that occurs when a huge amount of snow, ice, and debris rapidly move down a slope, tending to have disastrous effects. To understand the impact of such disasters, one needs to understand what causes avalanches and the dangers associated with them.
Avalanche results when a traveling layer of snow is swept from a slope and moves down the side of a mountain, accelerating and increasing in size as it goes. Along the way, it becomes an enormous snow-and-debris flow that moves as fast as more than 320 km/h (200 mph). Avalanches have the power to wipe out whole villages, carry trees, roads, and houses along with them.

Avalanches vary in form depending on the material and the type of slide. They are the following:

There are two principal types of snow avalanches:

Avalanches are usually caused by natural and human factors combined. Their most typical causes are:

Uttarakhand, being located in the risk-prone Himalayas, is at maximum risk from natural catastrophes through the occurrence of avalanches. This is so because of the sloping topography of this place, which experiences heavy snowfall and sits on high altitudes where the snow gets heaped up. Avalanches have become a commonplace occurrence here, especially in spots above 3,500 meters and slopes higher than 30 degrees.
Certain regions of Uttarakhand are identified as avalanche-risk zones. Such regions are the Gaumukh Glacier, Hemkund Sahib, Ghastoli, and the Kalindi-Badrinath trekking route. Avalanches are likely to be witnessed in the form of winters on north slopes and springs on south slopes. The topography of the region with its elevation and incline leads the region to be vulnerable to avalanches.

Global warming has also augmented the threat of avalanches in Uttarakhand by rendering the weather more unpredictable. Besides this, infrastructure development in sensitive areas such as road construction and building construction has the impact of causing disruption in snowpacks as well as elevating avalanche threats. On top of this, concentrated traffic flow into these areas destabilizes the snowpacks, raising the danger to the area.

Despite the challenge of making accurate avalanche predictions, there are several techniques and devices employed to avert the hazards and control avalanches:

Avalanches have created some of the most fatal natural disasters to ever take place on our planet. During World War I, over 60,000 soldiers were killed in avalanches in the Alps, and over 10,000 died on a single day in December 1916. Similarly, the disastrous avalanche in the Peruvian town of Yungay in 1970 resulted in over 18,000 deaths.