Wall of water slams Himalayan village, leaving multiple dead and dozens feared trapped or missing

A surge of flood water tore through a mountainous village in northern India Tuesday, leaving at least four people dead and dozens missing, officials said.

Dramatic video from the Himalayan village of Dharali, Uttarakhand state, shows the wall of water, mud and debris tearing down the mountainside and through the village, destroying the homes and businesses in its path. The flooding occurred around 1:45 p.m. local time, according to District Magistrate Prashant Arya in the city of Uttarkashi.

At least four people were confirmed killed, Arya said. “There are a lot of guest houses, restaurants and hotels there, because of which we immediately requested the army to aid rescue operations,” he said.

Over 50 people were missing and 40 to 50 homes have been washed away, deputy inspector general of the National Disaster Response Force, Mohsen Shahedi, said Tuesday evening.

Nine army personnel are still unaccounted for as of Tuesday evening, with a nearby army camp also hit by a mudslide, according to Lt. Col. Manish Shrivastava, a defense spokesperson in Uttarakhand.

Rescue efforts continued Wednesday, amid rising water levels due to incessant rains, with additional army units as well as tracker dogs, drones and earthmoving equipment deployed, Shrivastava added.

Military personnel have rescued around 190 people so far, Pushkar Singh Dhami, chief minister of Uttarakhnad, said in an update Wednesday.

He added that rescue efforts had been hampered by mudslides. “The entire Dharali has been completely hit by the disaster, and after yesterday’s incident, people told us that mudslides happened once, twice, six times… The entire connecting road has been completely affected by landslides at many places.”

Dhami continued, “Carrying out rescue operations and reoperationalizing facilities is extremely challenging because the weather keeps deteriorating.”

In an update on X Wednesday, Uttarkashi police said that eight locals, two Nepali citizens and nine soldiers have been confirmed missing as of Wednesday and one dead body has been recovered.

Possible cloudburst event

Uttarkashi District Magistrate Arya suggested the flood that devastated Dharali was set off by a sudden bout of heavy rain, also called a cloudburst.

“There’s a river there and because of the cloudburst, a lot of water came suddenly,” Arya said.

Cloudbursts can cause extreme rainfall in localized areas and they typically lead to flash flooding. They occur in the foothills of the Himalayas and are triggered in part by the topography — which also makes the flooding more dangerous. The India Meteorological Department defines a cloudburst as having a rainfall rate over 100 mm (4 inches) per hour.

Cloudbursts can cause extreme damage and destruction as huge amounts of water are funneled through the mountains and valleys and into villages in a short period of time.

CNN has not confirmed this flooding was caused by a cloudburst. There are other possible causes of an event like this, including glacial lake outbursts, dam failures or sudden releases of water from upstream. Glacial lake outbursts occur when natural ice dams weaken as they melt and collapse, sending sudden, unexpected torrents of water down steep terrain. They are most likely to occur at this time of year.

India’s Meteorological Department had its highest level of warning in place for “extremely heavy” rainfall across Uttarakhand. Some portions of the state, which is especially prone to flooding, received as much as 300 mm (12 inches) in the 24 hours through Tuesday morning.

India receives the majority of its annual rainfall during the Southwest Monsoon, which lasts from June through September. Agriculture and livelihoods depend on the heavy summer storms, but the storms can also bring such torrential downpours and flooding that the infrastructure in the region can’t handle.

Environmentalists have also long warned that rampant development in the Himalayan state is an ecological catastrophe waiting to happen.

While floods are common in the region during monsoon season, scientists say the climate crisis has exacerbated extreme weather events and made them more deadly. Shahedi, from the National Disaster Response Force, said Tuesday’s could be “replay” of a devastating glacier melt that happened several years ago in the same state.

In 2021, dozens died in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district after part of a Himalayan glacier fell into a river, sending a devastating avalanche of water, dust and rocks down a mountain gorge, and crashing though a dam.

CNN’s Jennifer Hauser and Esha Mitra contributed to this report.

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com