A total of 14 bodies were recovered while over 170 people are still missing after a glacier break in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district resulted in an avalanche and huge floods in the Alaknanda and Dhauliganga rivers on Sunday morning, forcing the evacuation of thousands, and damaging both houses and the nearby Rishiganga and NTPC power projects. Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat has announced ₹ 4 lakh compensation for the family of those killed. Rawat also said teams from the police, the Army, and the ITBP, as well as from the national and state disaster response forces, were “doing their best to save the lives of the workers at sites affected by the disaster”.
Over 170 laborers – 148 employed at the NTPC plant and 22 at Rishiganga are said to be missing, a spokesperson said while quoting the project-in charge. The massive flood came as a grim reminder of the Kedarnath deluge of 2013 which led to widespread devastation in the ecologically fragile Himalayan region.
The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), and the National Disaster Response Force personnel have reached up to 150 meters inside the 250-meter-long tunnel in Tapovan, news agency PTI reported.
The villages that have no access now include Gahar, Bhangyun, Raini Palli, Pang Lata, Suraithota, Tolma, and Fagrasu. Chamoli district magistrate Swati S Bhadoriya and police chief P Yashwant Singh Chauhan are camping at the site. There are 17-gram sabha areas affected by the disaster, out of which 11 were inhabited, while the residents of the rest had moved to lower areas for the winter.