Dharali Flash Floods: The rescue operation in and around Uttarkashi’s Dharali continued for fifth consecutive day after deadly mudslide in Kheer Ganga swept the areas on Tuesday. As part of the operation, the thrust was on improving road connectivity and supplying food packets while continuing the evacuation process.
Helicopters made multiple sorties on Saturday to evacuate people. SDRF’s dog squad sniffed through the dilapidated buildings swamped with rubble to find those missing since the disaster.
The Indian Air Force’s Chinook ad Ai-17 helicopters started making sorties from early morning to rescue people. Apart from dog squad, the SDRF is also using state-of-art equipment like victim locating and thermal imaging cameras to track missing individuals.
Uttarakhand DGP Deepam Seth conducted an on-spot inspection of the affected areas. While talking to media, he said, “Apart from the fast evacuation of stranded people, we have to focus on the search and rescue of the missing people”.
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The district administration has confirmed four death and 49 missing since the disaster hit Dharali. So far, over 1,000 people have been airlifted from around Dharali and Harshil, where an army camp also came under the effect of mudslide. Nine of the army personnel went missing.
Meanwhile, the construction work on Baily bridge at Linchigad near Gangnani continued on a war footing to improve road connectivity to the affected areas. Garhwal Commissioner Vinay Shankar Pandey said that the bridge is likely to be completed by Sunday evening.
A Bailey bridge is a kind of modular bridge that can be quickly assembled with pre-built parts. The Gangotri highway is blocked or breached at several points hampering efforts to transport advanced equipment required to search for the missing through tonnes of debris lying on the flash flood-ravaged site.