Uttarakhand Disaster: Death Toll Hits 26 & Over 170 Missing
Image Credits: BBC
Tapovan, India, Feb 8 (AFP/APP): Twenty-six people were confirmed dead on Monday and more than 170 others were missing after a devastating flash flood in India thought to have been caused by a chunk of glacier breaking off.
The resulting wall of water and debris barrelled down a tight valley in India’s Himalayan north on Sunday morning, destroying bridges, roads and hitting two hydroelectric power plants. Uttarakhand Director General of Police Ashok Kumar said late Monday that 26 bodies had been recovered, and 171 people were still unaccounted for. Most of those missing were workers at the two power plants, with some trapped in a U-shaped tunnel filled with mud and rocks when the flooding hit.
“If this incident happened in the evening, after work hours, the situation wouldn’t have been this bad as labourers and workers in and around the sites would have been at home,” Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat told reporters.
Twelve people were rescued from one side of the tunnel on Sunday but another 34 were still trapped at the other end, the Indo Tibetan Border Police’s Banudutt Nair, who is in charge of the rescue operation, told AFP. With the main road washed away, paramilitary rescuers were forced to scale down a hillside on ropes to reach the entrance. Emergency workers were using heavy machinery to remove tonnes of rocks.
“Approximately 80 metres (260 feet) inside the tunnel is cleared and accessible,” said Vivek Kumar Pandey, another disaster official.
Around 1,000 rescuers — including from the military, police and national disaster personnel — resumed their search operation at first light on Monday. Three excavators had reached the site, with one removing the slush and depositing it in the nearby river, Nair said, adding that the semi-liquid debris was estimated to be around 180 metres deep. Rescuers believed there were air pockets in the tunnel, Nair added.
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18 dead as glacier bursts in Uttarakhand
