Rescuers in northern India were yesterday working to rescue more than three dozen power plant workers trapped in a tunnel after part of a Himalayan glacier broke off and sent a wall of water and debris rushing down the mountain.
More than 2,000 members of the military, paramilitary groups and police have been taking part in search-and-rescue operations in the northern state of Uttarakhand after Sunday’s disaster, which has killed at least 11 people, left more than 150 others missing, and damaged dams and homes downstream.
Officials said the focus was on saving 37 workers who are stuck inside a tunnel at one of the affected hydropower plants. Excavators had been brought in to help with the efforts.
“The tunnel is filled with debris, which has come from the river. We are using machines to clear the way,” said H. Gurung, a senior official of the paramilitary Indo-Tibetan Border Police.
Authorities fear many more to be dead and were searching for bodies downstream using boats.
They also walked along river banks and used binoculars to scan for bodies that might have been washed downstream.
The flood was caused when a portion of Nanda Devi Glacier snapped off on Sunday morning, releasing water trapped behind it, a disaster experts said could be linked to global warming.
The floodwater rushed down the mountain and into other bodies of water, forcing the evacuation of many villages along the banks of the Alaknanda and Dhauliganga rivers.
Video from India’s northern state of Uttarakhand showed the muddy, concrete-gray floodwaters tumbling through a valley and surging into a dam, breaking it into pieces with little resistance before roaring on downstream. The flood turned the countryside into what looked like an ash-colored moonscape.
A hydroelectric plant on the Alaknanda was destroyed, and a plant under construction on the Dhauliganga was damaged, Indo-Tibetan Border Police spokesman Vivek Pandey said.
Flowing out of the Himalayan mountains, the two rivers meet before merging with the Ganges River.
The trapped workers were at the Dhauliganga plant, where on Sunday 12 workers were rescued from a separate tunnel.
A senior government official told reporters that they do not know the total number of people who were working in the Dhauliganga project.
“The number of missing people can go up or come down,” S.A. Murugesan said.
Pandey yesterday said that 153 workers at the two plants were missing and at least 11 bodies were recovered.
Those rescued on Sunday were taken to a hospital, where they were recovering.
One of the rescued workers, Rakesh Bhatt, told reporters that they were working in the tunnel when water rushed in.
“We thought it might be rain and that the water will recede, but when we saw mud and debris enter with great speed, we realized something big had happened,” he said.
Bhatt said one of the workers was able to contact officials via his mobile phone.
“We waited for almost six hours — praying to God and joking with each other to keep our spirits high. I was the first to be rescued and it was a great relief,” he said.
The Himalayan area where the flood struck has a chain of hydropower projects on several rivers and their tributaries.
Authorities said they were able to save other power units downstream by opening floodgates.
The floodwaters also damaged homes, but details on the number and whether any residents were injured, missing or dead remained unclear.
Officials said they were trying to track whether anyone was missing from villages along the two rivers.
Rescue personnel airdropped food packets and medicine to at least two flood-hit villages.
Many people in nearby villages work at the Dhauliganga plant, Murugesan said, but as it was a Sunday, fewer people were at work than on a weekday.
“The only solace for us is that the casualty from the nearby villages is much less,” he said.
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