Six days after the Uttarakhand glacier disaster the rescuers are continually making efforts to rescue those who are surviving in the damaged tunnel in Uttarakhand’s Tapovan. The rescuers have resorted to the drilling operation as the damaged tunnel has so much of mud and debris into it.
Only 36 bodies have been recovered so far and around200 are still missing, said the government.
The Home Ministry informed that the Union Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla conducted a meeting to check the progress of rescue and relied operations carried out by the central and agencies at the site of Hydro project of NTPC in Tapovan.
However, the rescue operation was stopped on Thursday because of the rising water level of Dhauliganga river.
Shifting the heaps of mud and debris was not working out anymore in the operation so the rescuers had to change their strategy by drilling through the hardened debris.
Now after the 6 days of trap in the tunnel the aim of the rescuing teams is to set up a “life-saving system”, to pump oxygen into the blocked tunnel to control the worsening conditions.
The Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and the Army are the agencies which are involved in the rescue and relief operation.
The rescue operation is mainly focusing on the tunnel of around 1.5 km of the full 2.5 km long tunnel network of the tunnels at Tapovan-Vishnugad hydel power project.
The hydel project was slammed after the glacier burst which resulted in the flood in Alaknanda and its tributaries.
