49 missing from sunken barge as navy grapples with rescue efforts
NEW DELHI: The Indian Navy has encountered an unforgiving sea off India’s west coast, where it has been at the centre of a challenging search and rescue mission for three days, involving warships, helicopters and surveillance aircraft, after Cyclone Tauktae killed dozens on land and at offshore facilities, said people familiar with the rescue effort launched on May 17.
Winds blowing at speeds of more than 75 knots (140 kmph), furious 30-foot-high waves crashing on warships every nine seconds, and almost zero visibility – the sea has been battering rescuers, who were still looking for 49 people missing from a barge that sank because of the storm.
While 434 people from two barges and an oil rig have been brought to safety, 26 people working at a third barge have died so far as the facility sank on Monday evening. Of the 261 people at the barge that sank, 186 people have been rescued, and 49 still missing.
The rescuers and those being rescued faced the same perils, said Commodore Alok Ananda, an officer in the naval operations directorate, overseeing the demanding mission from New Delhi.
“The intensity of the winds, the powerful waves, the heavy rain and zero visibility in the first crucial 24 hours of operations posed a giant challenge. In those conditions, it’s just you and the brute force of nature,” he said on Wednesday, the third day of the operations.
On Tuesday, the navy’s deputy chief Vice Admiral Murlidhar Sadashiv Pawar described the navy’s effort as “one of the most challenging search and rescue operations” he had seen in his four-decade military career. Pawar wasn’t overstating the challenges being faced by the naval squads leading the operations.
“Our warships sailed into the eye of the storm to carry out the mission. Everything had to be done with extreme caution. You didn’t want survivors to be slammed by a 7,500-tonne warship while being taken onboard,” said another officer, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The warships were required to keep a safe distance from the distressed barges and scores of survivors in life vests bobbing up and down in the monstrous swells all around them.
“If you are in the water and the warship as much as touches you, you are dead. It’s tricky maneuvering a warship in that environment,” said Ananda.
Five warships – INS Kochi,
INS Kolkata, INS Beas, INS Betwa and INS Teg – are currently involved in search and rescue operations off the country’s west coast, supported by P-8I maritime surveillance aircraft and Seaking and Chetak helicopters. Helicopters could not be deployed for operations on the first day because of extreme weather conditions.
“It was enormously challenging to get the first two warships out of the harbour in Mumbai due to four-metre high waves and wind speeds between 120 and 140 kmph. Subsequently, we had to keep ourselves and the warships safe to carry out the operations in extremely hostile conditions,” Ananda said.
The extremely severe cyclonic storm made landfall in Gujarat on Monday after strong winds and heavy rainfall battered Mumbai and other coastal areas.
The maximum wind intensity at the eye of the storm at the time of the landfall was 160170kmph, gusting to 200kmph. The system crossed the Gujarat coast between Porbandar and Mahuva (Bhavnagar district), east of Diu, with a maximum wind speed of 155-165 kmph, gusting to 185kmph.
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