Members of the ITBP rescue stranded people with the help of mountaineering ropes and ladders in Uttarkashi, in northern Uttarakhand state, yesterday.
Dehradun: Heavy rains yesterday hit operations to evacuate thousands of people still stranded in the hills of Uttarakhand as most helicopters could not operate while 20 people were killed as an IAF Mi-17 crashed while returning from a rescue mission, officials said.
The state government has put the death toll at 845 and said that it could climb further. The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) declared Uttarakhand devastation a “severe natural disaster” and requested leaders not to politicise the issue. It also said it would send a team to trace survivors under the debris.
Due to severe rains in Dehradun, many helicopters like the Mi-17 with higher passenger capacity were mostly grounded at the Jolly Grant airport while smaller choppers which tried to fly had to return to their bases at Joshimath and Harshil.
Fog prevented sorties around Devprayag, where a cloudburst in Dubh Mamora village left two people dead and three missing and washed away several houses, while bad weather hit chopper missions at Jangalchatti, Guptkashi, and Gauchar.
Returning from a rescue mission from Guptkashi and Kedarnath, a newly-acquired IAF Mi-17 V5 helicopter crashed north of Gaurikund, killing 20 people, including five crew members, an official statement said. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed shock over the accident while commending the armed forces for their “selfless work” in saving lives.
While Indian Air Force (IAF) and army officials maintained that the rescue operations would continue, they admitted that the operations “had taken a brief hit” and added that they were now being “extra cautious and not over zealous”. “All efforts are being done to pull out the trapped people but we will now take weather conditions and warnings more seriously,” an army officer said.
With more rain and rising fog across the valley and the hills, operations slowed down, leaving more than 7,500 people still stranded on the Badrinath route. Uttarakhand Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna said that while weather had hit the rescue operations, he requested people not to lose hope.
“We will reach every person who is stranded, it is just that weather is hampering the rescue efforts,” he added, contending that the number of people to be rescued was well under 5,000.
Officials also added that the mass funeral proposed for the people who died in Kedarnath premises and whose bodies are decomposing there was also aborted due to the rains.
The NDMA also said that around 125 bodies were recovered from the flood-devastated Kedarnath area, while many more could be buried under the debris. Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) personnel, undertaking rescue operations there, said the decomposing human and animal corpses are posing a health hazard.
Personnel of the Armed Forces Medical Services are working in the state with 29 teams deployed around Kedarnath while an emergency centre has been set up at Joshimath, an official release said.
In New Delhi, NDMA vice chairman M Shashidhar Reddy said MPs from all states could each contribute Rs50 lakh from their funds for the relief work. He said the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) would send a team to the state for locating survivors under the debris.”We have instruments to detect humans who are alive, by their heartbeat....”.
The ITBP raised concerns about decaying corpses. “The corpses are eight to nine days old. They are rotting. It is difficult to operate in that area due to the strong stench,” said an ITBP spokesman.
Workers sprayed disinfectant amid concerns about disease from the corpses. “We are spraying disinfectant in the flood-affected areas to prevent the spread of water-borne diseases,” state medical officer K D Sharma said.
A police official in charge of organising the cremations said belongings and documents recovered from bodies will be used to help with identification while DNA samples will also be collected. “Under no circumstances can we allow an outbreak of an epidemic,” senior disaster management official K N Pandey said. “We have reports that many stranded people are suffering from diarrhoea and other ailments and have decided to cremate the corpses near the Kedarnath shrine,” he said.
A senior official warned that the death toll of 1,000 could rise dramatically as the grim task of collecting the bodies from rivers and from under flattened villages and other debris continues. “From the feedback we are getting from people on the ground, people working in scavenging bodies, our estimate is the toll could be anything between 4,000 and 5,000,” a senior disaster management official said.
An aid worker meanwhile called the situation in Uttarakhand “a mess” as vast stretches of roads have disappeared and transporting relief to some of the worst-hit areas was near impossible.
“It is a mess right now. It is a complete mess,” despaired a spokesperson for ActionAid, which has relief workers in Chamoli, Rudraprayag and Pithoragarh districts.
Helicopters and soldiers have evacuated tens of thousands of people from the floods, while tonnes of food and other emergency supplies have been dropped to those still stranded. Unmanned drones have also been deployed to scan the thick jungles to find those still awaiting rescue, officials said.
Meanwhile, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said he was saddened by the disaster. “The secretary-general is saddened by the loss of life, and the damage to homes and infrastructure in India as a result of the torrential floods in the northern state of Uttarakhand over the last week,” a statement from his spokesperson said.
Agencies
