Question

Intense damage was caused in Ladakh in 2010 due to which natural calamity ?
A. Cloudburst
B. Landslide
C. Earthquake
D. Drought

Answer 1

Hint: Due to this calamity 71 villages were damaged, 255 people were reported dead and 29 people went missing. Overall 9000 people were directly affected by this. It caused flash floods, mudflows and debris flows. During this disaster, more than 20 millimetres of rain may fall in a few minutes.

Complete Answer:
A. Cloudburst: It signifies extreme amounts of rainfall in a short period along with hail and thunder. It creates floods and landslides along with. It is not as frequent as it occurs due to orographic lift (when warm air parcel mixes with cooler air) causing condensation in large amounts. To be specific rainfall greater than 100mm per hour is a cloudburst. The cloud burst in Ladakh on 5 august 2010 was recorded as 1-hour rainfall of 9.8 inches. It not only causes collisions of clouds with solid bodies but it can also occur due to the heavy condensation process by mingling of hot water vapours with cold.

B. Landslide: It can be described as ground movements such as rockfall, mudflows and debris flows. It can happen in mountains and even underwater. Landslides can be caused due to various reasons such as rainfall, earthquake etc. A landslide can be caused by both natural activities ( like glaciers melting, hydrostatic pressure in cracks etc.) Or by human intervention ( such as deforestation, blasting, earthworks etc.)There is no such big disaster recorded in Ladakh in 2010.

C. Earthquake: Is shaking of the earth surface that creates seismic waves. Such shake near the offshore can cause a tsunami. It also can cause landslides or volcanic activities. and it is measured by a Richter magnitude scale. No such calamity recorded in Ladakh in 2010.

D. Drought: A shortage of water supply for a long period at a place is called drought ( either surface water or groundwater ) . It's a very frequent calamity in most parts of the world. It is caused by climate change. Ladakh has some effect of drought going on due to falling in glacier areas, even Leh is rationing water for two hours in the morning. Such calamity hasn't caused any extreme damage to the place in 2010.

The correct answer is A as a cloud burst caused great damage in Ladakh on 6 august 2010.

Note: - Landslides of large scale and massive flash floods were the result of heavy rainfall in Uttarakhand June 2013. In all of this destruction, it is claimed that about 5000 people were killed and thus this became the most disastrous flood of India’s history.
- Constituting about 52 per cent of the total occurrence of disasters, floods became the most frequent disaster which affects India to a large extent.