Mussoorie, a raging fire at a house close to the Central School for Tibetans, in Happy Valley area of Mussoorie last afternoon has highlighted the problem of water paucity in the hill-station.
Once a home to four families, the house was completely gutted within hours. Fortunately there was no loss to life as the inhabitants of the house were out for their daily work.
Rakesh Tyagi, leading fireman at the site stated, “Prima facie it looks like a short circuit that caused the fire. For the past eight days we have had no water available for which we made several complaints to the Water Department. We managed three water tankers, but we got ready assistance from Lal Bahadur Shastri National Administration of Academy who assisted us by giving eight water tankers to douse the fire, which took us close to three hours.“
Mussoorie’s Uttarakhand Jal Sansthan, Assistant Engineer, S.Rawat maintains that there have been no shortage of water supply to Mussoorie’s lone fire station. “They have a direct water connection and get water twice a day, possibly their reservoir was depleted which caused this shortage. “
That said, the fact remains that while the existing water supply to the hill-station is 7.67 MLD, tourist season demand peaks to 14.5 MLD which is provided by the already-depleting twenty odd springs and brooklets in and around Mussoorie.
