Heavy rain has lashed the Kangra district, 58 km from Dharamshala, throwing life into disarray. The rapid pace at which the water was flowing transformed in no time a brook in Bhagsu Nag, which is a tourist attraction, into nothing short of a river. Some of the hotels in the area have reported heavy damage. The cloudburst and flash floods have instilled fear in people and also caused commotion and confusion. After a heavy cloudburst on Monday, Dharamshala is triggered by a flash flood, which washed away vehicles and caused damage to properties in the Bhagsu Nag area. Netizens are horror – stricken upon witnessing the dreadful scenario of the place which was shared by several localites, as well as the authorities, including SHO Mcleodganj Vipin Chaudhary, on Twitter. This A 37-second clip, shared by news agency ANI, shot from the balcony of a building, shows frightful visuals of a huge amount of water gushing rapidly through the parked vehicles. A few seconds into the clip, an SUV is seen being uprooted by the water but blocked by other vehicles, bundled together by flash floods.
People capturing these visuals could be heard screaming at the sight of a huge SUV being washed away. Once the car was blocked by other vehicles, one of them said: “Now, no car will go beyond this.” Others expressed shock at the sheer amount of water coming from the other side.
A Twitter user shared the video and captioned it, “Another frightful video of #cloudburst in #Mcleodganj #Himanchalpradesh #Dharamsala #Dharamshala Hope no one lost his life in this flood.”
Following this unfortunate event, netizens are sharing a video of mudslide, which occurred on 3rd July in Japan relating and claiming it to be the Dharamshala incident. Using InVid Google Chrome extension, several keyframes of the video were extracted and then these extensions were used to conduct a reverse image search on some of them. This led us to a tweet from 3 July, the caption of which was written in Japanese that mentioned ‘Atami landslide’. Also, this report was covered as one photo story on Hindustan Times and it carried the screengrab of the video of the mudslide that had hit a residential area in Atami, Shizuoka Prefecture in Japan.
The article mentioned that 19 people went missing after a powerful mudslide hit the Izusan district in Atami, Japan, on July 3, following heavy rain.
Another Youtube Channel ‘FA Climate, Weather and Atmosphere’ also uploaded this incident on 3rd July. The caption of the video read, “Devastating landslide in Shizuoka, Japan || July 3, 2021, || 日本.”
‘10 News First’, an Australian television news and current affairs service produced by Network 10, informed about the calamity by tweeting on 3 July. They captioned, “#BREAKING: There are fears for at least 19 people currently missing after a mudslide hit homes in Atami, Japan, west of Tokyo. Rescue workers are currently underway to search for the missing people.”
Thus, it is clear that though Dharamshala witnessed a dreadful situation the viral video is from Atami city in Japan where following a heavy rainfall the area was hit by a landslide on 3rd July.
