A massive operation has been on since Sunday night to rescue believed to be trapped inside a tunnel after glacier burst on February 7 caused flash floods that left 18 dead and over 200 missing.
The 12-foot high and 15-foot wide tunnel at Tapovan in Chamoli was blocked with slush and debris, trapping workers of an NTPC thermal power plant that was washed away. The tunnel is over 2.5 km long with just one entry and bifurcates into two, officials said, adding that it was hard to tell where the workers were trapped or whether they were together at all.
An official said it was believed that 34 people were trapped in one of the offshoots and five in the other. There has been no contact with any of them so far.
“It will be a 24X7 operation,” the official said.
Earth movers and shovels were used by hundreds of personnel and locals in the night-long mission to unclog the tunnel’s opening. In the day, personnel held sticks for better grip as they entered the sludge-filled tunnel.
Rescuers were seen in images and videos carrying wooden planks that are to be used to wade in through the slush and help create a platform to pull out the trapped people.
Teams are on standby with dragon light sets, oxygen cylinders and stretchers to provide immediate help to those brought out.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday asserted that his government is taking all measures to support the people of Uttarakhand, parts of which were hit by floods following a glacier burst on Sunday, and assured a delegation of state MPs that it is working to further strengthen infrastructure there to deal with any natural disaster in future.
According to BJP MP Anil Baluni, a Rajya Sabha member from the state, Modi said that the central government stands with the people of the hill-state in this hour of crisis and is constantly monitoring the ongoing rescue operations. Union Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP president J P Nadda were also present at the meeting. Modi said several institutions of the central government, be it the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, National Disaster Response Force, Army or Air Force, are part of the rescue mission and state bodies are also working effectively, according to Baluni.
