Chitral: Water level in the landslide lake continues rising, people move to safer areas

Chitral, March 4: The lake formed yesterday due to a major landslide atReshun village continued rising and inundating land in the upstream village.Shazia Bahadur, a local resident, told our correspondent that the water is continuously moving towards their village and if a solution is not found immediately, then the local settlements may also be inundated.Another local person named Jafar Ali said that large boulders have blocked a narrow gorge, due to which the lake is building up and the village is slowly being destroyed by the water.

A local person informed that the local administration has tried to blast the blockade twice but the blasts have so far proven to be ineffective in front of the huge debris that is now blocking the flow of the Mastuj River, which is a major contributory river for the Chitral river. The Mastuj river gets waster from Yarkhun Valley, where many glaciers are located, and also the Shandur Plateau, located between Ghizar district of Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral.

Officials from the Peoples Works Department (PWD) and the district administration have visited the lake, but no immediate solution seems to be in sight.The surging lake is causing land erosion and inflicting heavy losses on the farmers. Locals have started migrating to other safer areas.