People in Ghizer village live in constant fear

Many villages are located on geological fault lines, with varying degrees of seismic activity risk.

GILGIT: After people in Attabad, Nagar, Hussainabad and Khizerabad in Hunza reported underground tremors and sporadic landslides, people living in a village in Ghizer Valley also reported that a mountain near their hamlet was developing visible cracks.

Underground cracks were first reported this year in September in Gilgit-Baltistan.

“The mountain of Khushbat near Gupis village has developed visible cracks and living around it has now become very risky,” Wilayat Khan, a man from Gupis told The Express Tribune on Saturday. He said that boulders were seen rolling down the mountain.

Khan said that people, who are well aware about the devastation caused early this year by a similar incident which created the Attabad lake, are feeling highly insecure.

Khan said that an NGO had recently conducted a survey of his village and had advised people to shift to safer places. “But we don’t know where to go and for how long,” he said, urging the government to take stock of the situation which posed risks to about 500 households.

After Attabad, huge fissures started appearing near the village of Nagar where landslides swept away four houses, forcing people to move to other areas. People said heavy cracks could be seen on ground and they feared that the village could crumble away just like the village of Attabad.

In September, residents of Hussainabad and Khizerabad of Hunza complained about underground ‘movements’ in nearby mountains which caused periodic landslides, blocking access to the Shinaki area and other villages on the Karakoram Highway.

Officials in the region’s Disaster Management Authority said that many villages in this mountainous area were located on geological fault lines, with varying degrees of seismic activity risk.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 21^st, 2010.