Evacuees board a truck as heavy rain falls at Govindghat in northern Uttarakhand state.
New Delhi: Persistent efforts over the past more than 10 days have helped evacuate more than 100,000 people, including locals, from the rain and flood-hit areas of Uttarakhand as authorities cremated more bodies in Kedarnath yesterday. Around 1,800 people are still stranded in the state.
With 12 days gone since the rain-flood tragedy hit the state, a clearer picture of the massive losses has begun to emerge. Over 1,500 roads have been swept away, while around 2,000 houses and 154 bridges have been damaged.
The bodies of 18 personnel — from the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Indian Air Force (IAF) and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) — who were among the 20 killed in Tuesday’s chopper crash were also recovered.
Ten of the bodies were taken to Gauchar, which the IAF is using as an air base for rescue operations.
An ITBP officer said some of the bodies were so badly burnt that it was difficult to identify them.
The Mi-17 helicopter was carrying 20 personnel including five from the IAF, six from the ITBP and nine from the NDRF when it crashed Tuesday near Gaurikund while on a rescue mission.
NDMA vice chairman M Shashidhar Reddy said : “Approximately 1,829 people are still stranded all over Uttarakhand and we are hopeful that the rescue operation would be over by Friday.”
The National Disaster Management Authority, an autonomous body to coordinate disaster preparedness, said 104,095 people had been evacuated from the state till yesterday.
Reddy said 560 people had died, 463 were injured and 344 missing in the floods.
Reddy also said that several roads that had been closed due to the rescue operations has been opened. Roads from Uttarkashi to Gangotri, Joshimath to Badrinath and a few roads going towards Rudraprayag are still closed due to damage caused by landslides, and repair work was on, he said.
He said 1,520 roads were damaged all over the state.
After 300 bodies were cremated together on Wednesday, another batch of bodies was cremated yesterday.
Reddy said DNA samples of all the bodies had been taken. He did not have the number of bodies cremated.
With many bodies still buried under the debris, NDRF teams have been asked to assist the local administration to recover the bodies, Reddy said.
The search for bodies and the cremations came as villagers accused authorities of ignoring the needs of local residents and instead focusing rescue and relief efforts on visiting pilgrims and tourists.
“There were 67 houses in our Chandrapuri village out of which 63 were washed away by the Mandikini river,” Birendra Singh, a former army officer, said at a relief camp in Dehradun.
“Not a single official has visited our village as yet. We have nothing to go back to,” he said.
The union health ministry has stated that no disease outbreak has been reported from any part of Uttarakhand.
Three public health teams have been posted to Uttarakhand and eight additional teams have been kept on standby, a senior health ministry official said.
Though there were some diarrhoea cases in Haridwar, Uttarkashi, and Rudraprayag, no outbreak of communicable diseases had been reported from the affected areas yet, the official said.
A three-member high-level committee from the health ministry is in Dehradun to review the public health situation with the state health authorities, while a specialist from National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme has been placed with the state government for providing assistance.
The Indian Red Cross Society has also deployed a two-member team to Uttarkashi and another team to Pithoragarh. A high-level team also visited the state for assessment and coordinating relief work with the state Red Cross unit.
The Red Cross has provided seven truckloads of relief material that includes tents, family packs, kitchen sets, blankets and lanterns.
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