Dehradun (Uttarakhand): The bodies of three labourers were pulled out from the avalanche-hit Border Roads Organisation (BRO) camp in Chamoli on Sunday, bringing the death toll to seven, while efforts were on to rescue another missing worker on the third day of the operation.
Army doctors said 46 workers who were earlier rescued have been brought to the military hospital in Jyotirmath while one with a spinal cord injury was airlifted to AIIMS, Rishikesh. Three of the workers are in critical condition, Lt Col DS Maldhya said.
Helicopters, sniffer dogs and thermal imaging technology were being used to expedite the rescue operation due to apprehensions about possible inclement weather on Monday, officials said.
Three bodies of the missing labourers were found on Sunday, district administration officials said in Gopeshwar. With this, the number of workers who lost their lives in the Mana avalanche has mounted to seven. One person is still missing for whom the search is in progress, they said.
The bodies have been brought to Jyotirmath by helicopter where the post-mortem was being done at the Community Health Centre.
The deceased include Anil Kumar (21) from Rudrapur in Uttarakhand’s Udham Singh Nagar district, Ashok (28) from Fatehpur in Uttar Pradesh and Harmesh from Una in Himachal Pradesh, the officials said.
The lone worker who remains missing is 43-year-old Arvind from the Clement Town area in Dehradun.
The avalanche hit the BRO camp between Mana and Badrinath on Friday, burying 54 workers inside eight containers and a shed. Earlier, it was believed that the total number of trapped labourers was 55 but one of them was on unauthorised leave and had reached home safely.
By Saturday evening, 50 workers trapped under the snow were pulled out and four of them had died.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami visited the Uttarakhand State Emergency Operation Centre here to take an update on the rescue operation.
“The ground penetrating radar (GPR) system is being sent to the avalanche site and the help of modern tools like thermal imaging cameras and victim locating cameras is being taken to trace the labourers. The weather may turn bad on Monday again. The effort is to trace the missing on Sunday itself,” the chief minister said.
In a post on X, Dhami said he has instructed officials to expedite the ongoing operation.
“The Indian Army, ITBP, NDRF, SDRF and other relief and rescue teams are working on a war footing at the site of the incident,” he said.
Chamoli District Magistrate Sandeep Tiwari said the search operation is expected to gain pace as the weather is clear and the GPR system from Delhi is expected to arrive here any moment to aid the efforts.
An Mi-17 helicopter is waiting in Dehradun to fly the GPR system to the avalanche site, he said. State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams with sniffer dogs are at the avalanche site to help in the search and rescue efforts, he said.
Lt Gen Anindya Sengupta, GOC-in C, Central Command, and Lt Gen D G Mishra, GOC, Uttar Bharat, are at the avalanche site to monitor the rescue operations.
Six helicopters — three of the Indian Army Aviation Corps, two of the Indian Air Force (IAF) and a civil chopper hired by the Army — have been engaged in the operation.
Located three kilometres from Badrinath, Mana is the last village on the India-Tibet border at a height of 3,200 metres.
Army officials said the rescue operation on Saturday was mostly carried out by the Army and IAF helicopters as the approach road was blocked by snow at several points, making vehicular movement nearly impossible.
The priority is to bring the rescued workers to the Army hospital in Jyotirmath and look for the four missing workers, they said. If weather permits, specialised RECCO radars, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), quadcopters and avalanche rescue dogs will be pressed into service to trace the missing workers, Lt Gen. Sengupta said.
“Everything depends on the weather,” he added.
More than 200 personnel from the disaster management authority, ITBP, BRO, NDRF, SDRF, IAF, district administration, health department and fire brigade are engaged in the rescue operations, he said.
