2. Uttarakhand floods 2013: The Indian metorological department claims that warnings of very heavy rain, unusual for this time of the year, were issued two days ahead of the deluge at Kedarnath, Badrinath and Rudra Prayag.
These warnings were accompanied by an advisory that the Char dham Yatra should be deferred by a few days, but the state administration did not pay heed to it.
The disaster took almost 5,700 lives, according to official records.
The loss of lives was much higher, almost 10,000.
A concentrated effort on following up an early warning system could have minimized the damage caused, just as the Odisha government had done in the case of Cyclone Phailin and minimized loss of lives.
