The fear of villagers about another imminent calamity is not unfounded as a team of experts which conducted a study on the impact of the February flashflood on Raini recently recommended its evacuation at the earliest warning due to its increased vulnerability to natural disasters.
Rescue operations underway at Tapovan Tunnel, after a glacier broke off in Joshimath causing a massive flood in the Dhauli Ganga river (PTI photo)
DEHRADUN: Over 500 rescue personnel from state, disaster and defence forces are racing against time to rescue the 34 workers and there could be more believed trapped inside a 1.6-km-long debris-filled tunnel of the Tapovan-Vishnugad hydel project in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district. The flooded Dhauliganga is the river on which the project was being built.
The rescue effort on Monday with two National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams, over 300 Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) personnel, a Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) team and over 120 from the Army was entirely channelised towards that one tunnel. The 12 men in the other tunnel of the project had been rescued on Sunday.