1998 Malpa landslide

On 18 August 1998 at 3.00 a.m., massive landslide wiped away the entire village of Malpa in the Pithoragarh district of Uttarakhand, then in Uttar Pradesh in Kali Valley of Higher Kumaon division of the Himalayas.

A total of 221 people died, including 60 Hindu pilgrims travelling to Tibet as part of "Kailash Manas Sarovar Yatra".

As the area lies in a seismic zone, the earthquakes of 1979 and 1980 may have been the underlying cause, as was attributed by a report of the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology.

[1] The landslide generated around one million cubic meters of rock fall and debris flow.

Natural disasters in the area have been attributed to ″unplanned construction and urbanization on the fluvial and un-consolidated materials produced by active faults/thrusts in various sectors.″[2] The slide demonstrated the distressed state of rock in the Himalayan region because of the drift of the Indian plate northward.