Shimla landslides: With horror in their eyes, locals who barely escaped alive recall moments before disaster

“Priest Suman Kishore, whose body was recovered yesterday (Tuesday), had given us prasad before we left the shrine,” says Ritu Loomba, a resident of Shimla’s Summer Hill area.

Ritu Loomba (front) along with others watch rescue operations at the collapsed Shiv Bawadi shrine site. (Express photo)

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Fifty-year-old Ritu Loomba of Summer Hill stands with shock in her eyes at the site where a rescue operation is being carried out on Wednesday. With each body being recovered from under the debris of Shimla’s washed away Shiv Bawadi shrine, she recalls how she and her husband had left the temple merely half an hour before the tragedy had struck on Monday.

“My husband, Ashwani Loomba, 52, and I are regular visitors of the temple during the month of Sawan. We prefer to visit the shrine early in the morning because my husband, a Section Officer (SO) at Himachal Pradesh University (Shimla), has to reach office before 9.15 am. On Monday, we had gone to the shrine to pay obeisance around 6 am and had returned by around 6.50 am only to learn about the tragedy around 7.30 am,” Loomba shared with The Indian Express.

Still in disbelief, she added, “Priest Suman Kishore, whose body was recovered yesterday (Tuesday), had given us prasad before we left the shrine. Many of the victims, who were confirmed dead or whose bodies are being recovered, had passed us when we were returning from the shrine.”

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Like the Loombas, Sulakshna Devi, 52, a resident of MI Rooms at Summer Hill, had also left the shrine moments before the tragedy struck. The shiv temple situated in the gorge was surrounded by hills from three sides. It washed away following a cloud burst on Monday. As many as 13 bodies have been found so far while rescue work to look for more than a dozen missing people is still on.

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Meanwhile, 48-year-old Yam Thapa, a supervisor at a slaughterhouse in Krishna Nagar area in Shimla, had the narrowest escape on Tuesday. While Thapa managed to give death a slip, his colleagues — Naveen Bhalla, 48, a manager, and Raju, 32, a butcher at the slaughterhouse — were buried alive under the slaughterhouse Tuesday evening after a few houses collapsed on it. Their bodies were later found.

Yam Thapa pointing towards a collapsed slaughterhouse building. (Express photo)

Thapa, who stood near the collapsed slaughterhouse, told The Indian Express, “Tuesday is an off day and a handful of us were at the slaughterhouse. When we noticed a huge crack on the roof, we ran out of the building but Bhalla, Raju and I returned to our residential premise attached to the slaughterhouse to gather our valuables. While I managed to escape, the building collapsed before the two of them could come out.”

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He added, “It was a known fact that the slaughterhouse would collapse one day. The soil of the hill had started loosening. Meanwhile, the four houses that had collapsed on the slaughterhouse were vacated on time.

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At least 20 people have died and a dozen are missing in the repeated landslides reported in the last one week in Shimla.

Saurabh Parashar

Saurabh Parashar is a journalist with The Indian Express, where he primarily covers developments in Himachal Pradesh. He has been associated with The Indian Express since 2017 and has earlier worked with The Times of India. He has 17 year + experience in the field of print journalism. An alumnus of Government College for Men, Sector 11, (Panjab University), Chandigarh, Saurabh holds a Diploma in Journalism from Bhartiya Vidya Bhawan, Chandigarh. He pursued his Master’s in Mass Communication from Guru Jambheshwar University of Science & Technology, Hisar. In addition, he completed his law degree from Himachal Pradesh University (HPU), Shimla. ... Read More

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