RUDRAPRAYAG, India (AP) – Rescuers in northern India were working Monday to rescue more than three dozen power plant workers trapped in a tunnel after part of a Himalayan glacier broke and sent a wall of water and debris rushing into the mountain for a disaster this has left 18 people dead and 165 missing.
More than 2,000 military, paramilitary and police groups have been involved in search and rescue operations in the northern state of Uttarakhand after Sunday’s flood, which destroyed one dam, damaged another and he washed the houses downstream.
Officials said it focused on saving 37 workers trapped inside a tunnel at one of the affected hydropower plants. Excavators had been helped with efforts to reach the workers, who have been out of contact since the flood.
“The tunnel is full of rubbish, which has come from the river. We are using machines to pave the way, ”said H. Gurung, a senior official in the Indo-Tibetan border paramilitary police.
Authorities fear many more will be killed and searched for bodies downstream with boats. They also walked along the river bank and used binoculars to look for bodies that could have been washed downstream.
The flooding occurred when a portion of the Nanda Devi glacier broke on Sunday morning, releasing trapped water behind it, according to a disaster expert who could be linked to global warming. The flood waters rushed down the mountain and went to other bodies of water, forcing the evacuation of many villages on the banks of the Alaknanda and Dhauliganga rivers.
The video from the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand showed the muddy gray concrete waters falling through a valley and sinking into a dam, breaking them into pieces with little resistance before roar downstream. The flood turned the field into what looked like an ash-colored lunar landscape.
A hydroelectric plant in Alaknanda was destroyed and a plant under construction in Dhauliganga was damaged, said Vivek Pandey, a spokesman for the Indo-Tibetan border police. Emerging from 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 The Associated Press that he is unaware of the total number of people working on the Dhauliganga project. “The number of missing people can go up or down,” SA Murugesan said.
Pandey said Monday that 165 workers from the two plants were missing, including those trapped in the tunnel, and that at least 18 bodies had been recovered.
The rescued on Sunday were taken to a hospital, where they are recovering.
One of the rescued workers, Rakesh Bhatt, told The Associated Press that he was working in the tunnel when water entered.
“We thought it might be rain and the water would recede. But when we saw mud and debris coming in with great speed, we realized that something big had happened, ”he said.
Bhatt said one of the workers was able to contact officials via his mobile phone.
“We waited almost six hours, praying to God and joking among ourselves to keep our spirits high. I was the first to be rescued and it was a great relief, ”he said.
The area of the Himalayas where Sunday’s flooding flooded has a chain of hydroelectric projects on several rivers and their tributaries. Authorities said they were able to save other power units downstream due to timely action taken to release water by opening doors.
Flood waters also damaged homes, but no detailed data is available on the number and whether there have been any injuries, missing or dead. Officials said they were trying to track down if anyone was missing from the villages on the two rivers.
Government officials threw packages of food and medicine at at least two villages affected by the floods.
Many people from nearby villages work at the Dhauliganga plant, Murugesan said, but as it was a Sunday there were fewer people working than on weekdays,
“The only consolation for us is that the casualty in nearby villages is much lower,” he said.
Some have already begun to point to climate change as a contributing factor given the known melting and rupture of global glaciers, although it is also known that other factors such as erosion, earthquakes, water and volcanic eruptions cause glaciers to collapse.
Anjal Prakash, research director and adjunct professor at the Indian School of Business who has contributed to UN-sponsored research on global warming, said that although data on the cause of the disaster has not yet been released. were available, “this is very similar to climate change that glaciers are melting due to global warming.”
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Banerjee reported from Lucknow, India.