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Three villages in Chamoli district were destroyed by heavy rains on the night of September 18-19, 2025.
The floods and debris flows killed seven people, including twin infants, and wiped out dozens of homes.
Survivors, many displaced once before by the 1999 Chamoli earthquake, have again lost everything.
Relief remains patchy — some families await compensation and official recognition of their land rights.
Livelihoods, fields, and orchards have been buried under mud, leaving residents uncertain of where or how to rebuild.
Three villages in the Nanda Nagar area of Chamoli district were devastated by torrential rain on the night of September 18-19, 2025. Now, villagers are left asking a desperate question: Where will they live?
Like Vimla Devi of Semi village in Rudraprayag district, Vimla Devi of Phali Laga Sauntonola in Chamoli has become yet another face of Uttarakhand’s recurring disasters. But while the former still lives under her roof, the latter has lost hers entirely.
That night, relentless rainfall brought destruction from three sides. The Chufla river, which flows beneath their homes, first swelled into a lake before bursting through its banks. As the water level rose, debris began to pour down from two directions.
Nearby houses shook violently. Around 2 am, a dozen villagers fled their homes and took shelter under a large tree. By dawn, the homes they had left behind were gone — consumed by fire and flood. Nearly a dozen houses in Sauntonola were completely destroyed.
The Chufla Gad, a tributary of the Nandakini River, joins the latter at Nandanagar (formerly Ghat), in Chamoli district. The Nandakini originates in the Nanda Devi mountain range and merges with the Alaknanda at Nandaprayag — one of the five sacred Prayags of Uttarakhand.
Three adjoining villages — Phali Laga Sauntonola, Kuntri Laga Phali, and Kuntri Laga Santi — all under the Phali and Santi gram panchayats, were destroyed. Seven people were killed, including twin infants found in their mother’s arms.
The three villages, spread within a one-kilometre radius, were struck by debris flows at six points. Two of these were known drains, though usually with little water flow. In the remaining four, residents say they had never seen rainwater or debris flow in living memory.
“Never in my lifetime has so much water come down from the hills,” says 72-year-old Chandramani Sati of Kuntri Laga Santi. “These drains were always dry, but this year the rain came so hard that debris poured down everywhere. We barely escaped with our lives.”
This is not the first time these families have been uprooted. After the 6.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Chamoli in March 1999 triggered massive landslides, residents of Phali and Santi relocated across the Chufla Gad to safer ground. But now, the same families have lost everything again. Their homes have been buried under mud and stone. “Where do we go now?” asks one resident.
More than two dozen families are currently sheltering in an ashram. The administration provided food for the first two weeks, but the families now fend for themselves.
According to Raju Lal, a former village head and Vimla Devi’s brother-in-law, Scheduled Caste families have been denied compensation because the land they settled on after the 1999 quake is not officially recorded as theirs — even though they have a written resolution from the gram panchayat allowing their relocation.
Some families in Kuntri Laga Phali have received compensation. The Uttarakhand government announced that affected families would be given Rs 5 lakh each in immediate relief. But the survivors say this amount is far from enough to rebuild their lives. “Where will we build our houses? Who will tell us which land is safe?” asks a villager. “Even if we take loans, how can we survive without a source of income?”
The disaster has destroyed more than homes. Fields and orchards that sustained families have been obliterated.
Kanta Prasad, a farmer, says his malta and lemon orchard — his main source of livelihood — was wiped out. “Last year, I sold two quintals of malta,” he says. “Now there’s no sign of my orchard. We can somehow rebuild a house, but without income, how will we live?”
In nearby Dhurma village, residents who had also rebuilt after the 1999 earthquake saw their homes collapse again during the September storm. Two people died there.
The people of Chamoli’s devastated villages have lived through two disasters in a generation — both times losing everything. Now they ask, with fear and resignation: where can they rebuild their lives so they do not have to face the next one?