Stand With Dehradun: Cloudburst Emergency Relief

“Dehradun Was Sleeping… And Then the Mountains Cried”

A campaign for relief, resilience, and rebuilding after the Dehradun floods. On the night of September 15, 2025, the city of Dehradun was sleeping under grey monsoon skies. Children were tucked into beds. Shopkeepers were closing up. Families were watching the rain from their windows, unaware that this would be the last quiet moment they’d see for a while.

By midnight, a cloudburst over the hills changed everything. The peaceful Karligaad stream in Sahastradhara turned violent. A wall of water came rushing down, smashing trees, tearing apart homes, lifting bridges off their roots. The skies poured over 192 mm of rain in a matter of hours, the heaviest in the region. Villages like Maldevta, Santla Devi, and Tapovan were caught off guard as rivers like the Tamsa, Tons, and Song overflowed into the streets.

“I thought it was a bomb,” said Vishnu Dutt Bhatt, a 62-year-old man from Karligaad. “The roar of the water, the screams, the trees falling… it was like the mountains themselves were crying.” By morning, Vishnu’s home was gone. In Maldevta, Anita Rawat ran into the forest barefoot, clutching her baby and a small bag of biscuits.

“We had no milk. We sat in the hills for five hours, just praying to survive.” Entire neighbourhoods were submerged. The sacred Tapkeshwar Mahadev Temple was flooded, its inner sanctum barely spared. Roads to DIT University collapsed. The IT Park area and hostels were submerged. The Maldevta approach bridge was swept away, cutting off critical routes. More than a dozen lives were lost in the night. 13 people died in Dehradun alone, with 17 totals across Uttarakhand, and 16 are still missing.But in the face of so much loss, Dehradun rose.

Rescue teams from the NDRF, SDRF, and Public Works Department worked through the night. Volunteers like Himanshu Ojha walked through floodwater to reach officials when phone lines went down. People opened their homes to strangers. Local schools became shelters. Volunteers packed food, water, medicines; anything they could gather.

This is not just a flood story. It is a story of resilience, of a city that came together when nature pulled everything apart.

Now, Dehradun Needs Us.

There are families sleeping on school floors, children with no books or clothes, elders waiting for their homes to be rebuilt. They don’t need pity, they need action. Your support can help:

1. Feed a hungry family
2. Replace a child’s school supplies
3. Rebuild a shattered home
4. Bring clean water and dry clothes to people who lost everything

This is a call to every human heart. If you’ve ever walked Dehradun’s quiet lanes, seen the hills at sunrise, prayed by its rivers, or simply felt moved by someone’s pain, this is your moment to give back. The mountains cried that night. Now it’s time for us to answer, not with words, but with help.