Himalayan glacier 18 dead, more than 200 missing
over 4 years in The Irish Times
Eighteen bodies have been recovered, officials said, as rescuers searched for more than 200 people missing in the Indian Himalayas on Monday.
This includes some trapped in a tunnel, after a part of a glacier broke away sending a torrent of water, rock and dust down a mountain valley.
Sunday’s violent surge below Nanda Devi, India’s second-highest peak, swept away a small hydro electric project called Rishiganga and damaged a bigger one further downstream the Dhauliganga river being built by state-firm NTPC.
Most of the missing were people working on the two projects, part of many the government has been building deep in the mountains of Uttarakhand state as part of a development push.
“As of now, around 203 people are missing,” state chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat said, and the number was changing as more information about people caught up the deluge emerged from the remote area.
There had been no voice contact yet with anyone in the tunnel, another official said. Heavy equipment has been employed and a dog squad flown to the site to locate survivors.
Videos on social media showed water surging through a small dam site, washing away construction equipment and bringing down small bridges.
“Everything was swept away, people, cattle and trees,” Sangram Singh Rawat, a former village council member of Raini, the site closest to the Rishiganga project, told local media.
It was not immediately clear what caused the glacier burst on a bright Sunday morning. Experts said it had snowed heavily last week in the Nanda Devi area and it was possible that some of the snow started melting and may have led to an avalanche.
Rescue squads were focused on drilling their way through a 2.5km (1.5 miles) long tunnel at the Tapovan Vishnugad hydropower project site that NTPC was building 5km (3 miles) downstream where about 30 workers were believed trapped.
“We are trying to break open the tunnel, it’s a long one, about 2.5 km,” said Ashok Kumar, the state police chief.
On Sunday, 12 people were rescued from another tunnel that was much smaller. – Reuters