Landslide along the Highways: A Case Study of Darjeeling Hill, West Bengal.

Abstract

Out of the total landslide occurrences, nearly 20% are found in North Eastern region of India. The official figures of United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR) and the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) for the year 2006 also states that landslide ranked third in terms of number of deaths among the top ten natural disasters, as approximately 4 million people were affected by landslides. Unless human death it poses serious damage on roadways, railways, buildings, dams and many natural resources with untold measure of ecosystem and human society. As transportation is a lifeline of a civilization and lack of self sufficiency of a region it hold an important place to meet daily needs of human beings of a region. The study route (NH 31 A, NH 55 and SH 12 A) of landlocked Darjeeling district is very much prone to landslide vulnerability. The black memories of previous massive landslide hazard took large impression on the inhabited society. Sometime the district remains isolated island due to breakdown of transportation for a stretch of days in the time of massive landslide along study route. The main objective of the study is to highlight/describe the present situation of landslide zone along three study route. The study also highlight the nature of landslide took place according to their vulnerability scale, type of movement, type of activity, type of distribution and lastly type of style for further management.