Sanjay Rawat had been at his desk since six AM.
This was not unusual. In Uttarakhand in August, every year, the Disaster Management Office in Rudraprayag moved to a six AM start sometime around the second week of July and didn't move back until October. The monsoon was the monsoon — it had been the monsoon here since before the district had a name and it would be the monsoon long after the district had reorganised itself several more times. What changed, year by year, was the severity and the speed. This year the meteorological data had been saying, since May, that the August rainfall would be at the upper end of the expected range. Sanjay had read the meteorological data and he had made the appropriate preparations and he had, at six this morning, been sitting at his desk with a fresh report of overnight rainfall in the catchment areas and the specific dread of a man who had been doing this job for nine years and knew what the numbers meant.
The numbers this morning had meant: this is going to be a bad day in the gorge areas. The catchment had received in six hours what it normally received in two days. The rivers were going to go into flash flood by mid-morning. Maybe earlier.
He had issued the alerts. He had been issuing alerts since six-fifteen — to the district roads department, to the police, to the school transport coordinator, to the block development officers. The alerts said: all mountain routes in gorge-adjacent areas to be treated as high-risk. All vehicle operators to report to the nearest safe point. No new movement on Category B routes until further notice.
