Rescuers in India search for 37 trapped in tunnel
RESCUERS in India were working yesterday to locate more than three dozen power plant workers trapped in a tunnel, after part of a Himalayan glacier broke off and sent a wall of water and debris rushing down a mountain in a disaster that has left at least 26 people dead and 165 missing.
More than 2,000 members of military and police forces were taking part in search-and-rescue operations in the state of Uttarakhand after Sunday’s flood, which destroyed one dam, damaged another and washed away homes downstream.
Officials said the focus was on saving 37 workers who are stuck inside a tunnel at one of the affected hydropower plants. Excavators have been brought in to help with the efforts.
“The tunnel is filled with debris, which has come from the river. We are using machines to clear the way,” said H. Gurung, a senior official of India’s Indo-Tibetan Border Police.
Authorities fear many more may be dead and were searching for bodies downstream using boats. They also explored along river banks to scan for bodies that might have been washed downstream.
The flood was caused when a portion of the Nanda Devi glacier snapped off on Sunday, releasing water trapped behind it, in a disaster which experts said could be linked to global warming.
The floodwater rushed down the mountain and into other bodies of water, forcing the evacuation of many villages along the banks of the Alaknanda and Dhauliganga rivers.
Video footage showed muddy, grey floodwater tumbling through a valley and surging into a dam, breaking it into pieces with little resistance before roaring on downstream. The flood turned the surrounding countryside into what looked like an ashcoloured moonscape.
A hydroelectric plant on the Alaknanda was destroyed, and a plant under construction on the Dhauliganga was damaged, said Vivek Pandey, an Indo-Tibetan Border Police spokesman. The two rivers meet before merging.
The trapped workers were at the Dhauliganga plant, where on Sunday 12 workers were rescued from a separate tunnel. Mr Pandey said yesterday that 165 workers at the two plants, not including those trapped in the tunnel, were missing and at least 26 bodies had been recovered.
One of the rescued workers, Rakesh Bhatt, told the Associated Press: “We thought it might be rain and that the water will recede, but when we saw mud and debris enter with great speed, we realised something big had happened.”
Some analysts have already started pointing at climate change as a contributing factor, given the known melting and break-up of the world’s glaciers, though other factors such as erosion, earthquakes, a build-up of water pressure and volcanic eruptions have also been known to cause glaciers to collapse.
Anjal Prakash, of the Indian School of Business, who has contributed to United Nations-sponsored research on global warming, said that, while data on the cause of the disaster was not yet available, “this looks very much like a climate change event as the glaciers are melting due to global warming”.