Overview
- A video first shared on Instagram on July 9 shows students and mess staff standing on a large board tied into a floating platform to cross a submerged stretch near Kasturba Bhawan on the IIT Roorkee campus.
- The improvised raft was used to move people between the hostel area and other campus buildings and to allow mess staff to reach the kitchen so meals could be prepared despite the flooding.
- The clip, posted on the account 'phd_baddie,' quickly went viral and amassed hundreds of thousands of views while drawing widespread social media reaction ranging from praise for ingenuity to ironic comments about an engineering institute being waterlogged.
- The campus flooding followed days of heavy monsoon rain and India Meteorological Department warnings that included red alerts and flash-flood advisories as rivers such as the Alaknanda and Mandakini rose close to their warning and danger levels.
- The episode underscores the recurring strain monsoon extremes place on Uttarakhand infrastructure and raises practical questions about campus drainage and emergency planning for institutions in flood-prone hill and foothill regions.