The Scene at Ground Zero of Uttarakhand Floods

Manan Vatsyayana/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images A car driving through a damaged section of road between Rudraprayag and Gauchar in Uttarakhand, on Tuesday.

RUDRAPRAYAG, Uttarakhand -The flash floods in Uttarakhand have caused damage in all the hilly districts of the state, but no district has experienced as much devastation as Rudraprayag, home to the Kedarnath shrine, which draws thousands of pilgrims every summer.

As of Thursday evening, 582 residents and 2,843 pilgrims were reported missing in Rudraprayag after heavy rains caused flash floods on June 16. The floods have killed an estim ated 1,000 in the entire state.

During the floods, the Rudraprayag district government hospital treated 3,855 patients, mainly pilgrims from Kedar Valley, where Kedarnath is located. The doctors said that 10 pilgrims were brought dead and five died in the hospital. The most critically injured were sent to Dehradun, the state capital.

Indian Army/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images Members of the Indian Defence Forces tending to a patient at a field hospital in Uttarakhand, on June 20.

During the heavy rains, the last 10 miles to the shrine were accessible only by fo ot, leaving the trekking pilgrims vulnerable to the fast-moving waters.

“This disaster was much more beyond our imagination. It was much more beyond our capacities to handle,” Dilip Jawalkar, chief administrator of the district, said Thursday in the town of Rudraprayag, the district headquarters, 55 miles south of Kedarnath. “We were totally cut off and the only connectivity was by air.”

Floods and landslides have washed out 41 roads and 28 bridges, both small and large, and damaged 188 state government buildings. “The only lifeline is the main steel bridge connecting the town with the rest of the state, which remained intact,” Mr. Jawalkar said on Thursday. “Normally the bridge is above 20 meters [70 feet] above the water level. On the 17th, the water was touching the bridge.”

More than two dozen government workers including several policemen have died in the Kedar Valley.

Most of the missing local residents had been working in Kedar Valley during the pilgrim season as shopkeepers, priests, hotel owners and porters.

Prashant Bagwadi, 26, went to Kedarnath to assist his uncle at his general store, which was on the ground floor of a two-story house. On the morning of June 17, he was swept away by the flash floods caused by an overflowing Mandakini River, along with his uncle and two cousins.

Anita Devi, Mr. Bagwadi's mother, said she last spoke to her son at 6:55 a.m. on the day the floods took him. “After one hour, I saw the water level going up in the river. I called up again at 8 a.m., but the phone kept saying it was switched off,” said Mrs. Devi, 45, at her house in front of Mandakini River in the town of Rudraprayag.

One cousin of Mr. Bagwadi's survived the flood with a fracture in both knees, but Mr. Bagwadi and the others have yet to be found.

The grim task of cremating the bodies of victims has been slowed because of the rain. “We could do the cremation of 18 bodies y esterday and 15 bodies today at Kedarnath,” said Mr. Jawalkar on Thursday. “The postmortem is conducted at Kedarnath itself. The team of doctors has been airlifted to Kedarnath.”

At the district government hospital, a team of doctors was busy planning measures to avoid an outbreak of water-borne diseases. In the village of Rampur, 12 miles south of the Kedarnath shrine, doctors have treated 266 patients for diarrhea and vomiting. “We suspect some water contamination in disrupted water lines,” said Dr. Kaladhar Sharma, chief medical officer of Rudraprayag. “We are advising people to boil the water before drinking and use chlorine tablets.”

The first phase of rescue operations is almost over, but the district has a long way to go before it can start recovery efforts. “It will take many more months to get back to the comfort level in the district,” said Mr. Jawalkar.