Sunday's 6.8 earthquake had its epicentre at Mangan, north Sikkim, and caused widespread devastation across the state, but Bhutan — which shares a border with East Sikkim and is barely 150km from Mangan — escaped major losses, thanks to its large forest cover. The country did report a death and four people injured but its homes and roads were mostly intact unlike in Sikkim, where landslides devoured vast chunks of roads, and the death toll touched 41 by Monday afternoon.
Sources in the Bhutanese government said on Monday the sole death in the earthquake was caused by a loose boulder rolling downhill and hitting a woman carrying water home in the upper reaches of Phuentsholling. Four villages in Haa district bordering Sikkim sustained injuries from roof and wall collapses.
Experts said the impact of the earthquake could have been much worse in Bhutan had it not been for its 74% forest cover. In Sikkim, most deaths were caused by mudlsides that wiped out the ground beneath houses and blocked key roads, including the NH-31, in several areas. But in a naturally green Bhutan, forests helped hold the soil together in the hill slopes, preventing such mudslides. For instance, during an earthquake that struck the Himalayan nation in 2009, most casualties took place in eastern Bhutan, where the green cover had eroded and largescale construction activity was on.
In Sikkim, the forest cover was about 48% in 2009, according to a recent report from the Raj Bhavan in Gangtok. In Darjeeling, according to a West Bengal forest department report of 2006-07, the forest cover was about 38%. There has been a loss of forest cover in Sikkim in recent years because of the ongoing construction of a series of hydel projects on the Teesta and its tributaries, making it more vulnerable to quakes. Assuming the green cover of Darjeeling has stayed the same for over five years, the Queen of the Hills, too, is a sitting duck to a temblor. Read the full report here.
Source: Nirmalya Banerjee, TNN, Kolkata.
