By Shishir Prashant 
PrashantNews
At around 10.15 pm on Tuesday night (September 15), Saurav Rawat, who lives in Karligard in Dehradun, heard a strange sound of flash floods and rolling boulders in Sahastradhara river flowing at the backyard of his home.
“It was raining heavily and the smell of the soil was also very peculiar,” said Rawat (27). These were the ample indicators of a big disaster that was coming in, he explained. He has witnessed a similar flood in 2011 also.
The Moment Rawat realized that a cloudburst has stuck in their area, he along with his elder brother Sagar (36), without losing any time, began ringing up lots of people downstream of the Sahastradhara river to alert them of the impending danger.
After receiving these phone calls, many people who were either closing shops or doing some other works in hotels in the downstream areas of Karligard ran to save their lives with majority of them ascending the nearest hills. Within 2-3 minutes, the flash floods hit Sahastradhara. But by that time, many lives were saved.
The two places – Karligard and Sahastradhara where the phone calls were made, there was no report of any loss of life. However, lots of shops and hotels were destroyed in the flash floods. In the nearby Majhara village, three people were killed in the floods.
“Lots of workers who were inside hotels and shops along the Sahastradhara river immediately ran away after hearing our SOS call,” said the two brothers who are the joint owners of a hotel at Sahastradhara area.
“Yes! it is true that the two brothers saved many lives in Sahastradhara by alerting them 2-3 minutes minutes before the flash floods struck,” said Pravin Chandel, the owner of Haunted House in Sahastradhara.
“Few minutes before the floods, we were told to run away. We just did that,” said Vinod Rawat, the caretaker of the collapsed Dev Hills hotel.
But majority of the people couldn’t do anything to save their belongings. “We are ruined,” said Karak Singh of nearby Kali Mohalla, whose house was completely destroyed.
