DARJEELING,: Continuous rainfall in the hills triggered a massive mudslide at Lebong cart road here above Loreto Convent School halting traffic for about 2 hours on Friday afternoon. Meanwhile, the Darjeeling Municipality has started a drive to remove encroachments on drains to curtail water overflowing on the streets
The landslide at Lebong road took place around noon with two Maruti Eco vehicles also damaged completely with slush and debris coming from above all of a sudden. Fortunately, no casualties took place as the vehicles were empty. Vehicles are normally parked there to pick up children from schools. The particular area sees a heavy movement of children during the morning and evening time with Loreto Convent and St. Teresa School located below the road stretch.
The road was cleared for traffic movement by civil defence volunteers, locals, police and the Fire department.
A similar landslide also took place at Hill Cart road near the railway station with no casualties also reported there.
Darjeeling Municipality chairman Dipen Thakuri said: “There were landslides in two places in the municipality area here today and our team helped in clearing the area along with providing things like tarpaulins. These are natural calamities and one cannot say where it will take place however we have conducted a survey where such of incident can occur with us asking the people there to stay vigil”.
The municipality has also issued helpline numbers 9434121738, 8942001049 and 9733719979.
Meanwhile, following the heavy rainfall, many places at Darjeeling water is witnessing water flowing on the road causing inconvenience not only to people but also posing a danger for further landslides and landslips. Addressing this issue the Darjeeling civic body today removed encroachment on drains - mainly slabs and stairs built on top of it in front of six hotels at Coochbehar road here.
Darjeeling Municipality councillor Nitesh Gurung said: “We had served notices to these hotels a week back to remove the encroachments in the drains. With water not being able to flow from the drains it was overflowing on the roads. They did not remove the encroachments so we removed it today.”
Gurung added that the civic body has identified more areas where such encroachments are there and notices would be sent to such properties to remove it, failing which the municipality will remove it. Today the encroachments were removed with the help of excavators.
On the hand, the NH 10 the main route connecting Sikkim and Kalimpong to Siliguri remained closed even today following an order by Kalimpong District Magistrate on July 2 not to allow movement from there for repair work. At present boulders are being reported to be falling in different places on the stretch. It is presently being estimated that NH 10 will remain closed for more than a week.
The road from Kalimpong and Sikkim via Teesta road is also yet to be officially opened with protection wall being made there.