At least 22 personnel on board accommodation barge P305 that went adrift in Cyclone Tauktae fury before sinking in the Arabia Sea off Mumbai coast are dead and 65 still missing, a Navy official said on Wednesday.
: Wednesday, May 19, 2021, 9:00 PM IST
As Cyclone Tauktae leaves at least 22 dead on barge P305, Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik says Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas answerable (PTI Photo)
At least 22 personnel on board accommodation barge P305 that went adrift in Cyclone Tauktae fury before sinking in the Arabia Sea off Mumbai coast are dead and 65 still missing, a Navy official said on Wednesday.
The Navy said its personnel, battling extreme weather, have so far rescued 186 of the 273 people who were onboard barge P305 and also two from tugboat Varaprada. Search and rescue operations are still on and we haven t lost hopes of bringing them ashore, an official said. However, the chance of finding survivors is getting bleaker as the hours pass by, he added.
But the company did not inform about it, he said.
Bandgar said before they got know about his rescue, his family members kept crying till he called them to inform that he was safe, he said, adding his kin were coming to Mumbai to see him.
Meanwhile, the oil ministry on Wednesday constituted a high-level committee to enquire into the sequence of events leading to the stranding of three vessels of a contractor of ONGC in cyclone Tauktae .
Three barges of Afcons, a contractor working on ONGC fields off the west coast with more than 600 people on board, were stranded in offshore areas during the severe cyclone.
India Scours Sea After Barge Sinks, 2nd Adrift After Cyclone claimsjournal.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from claimsjournal.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Cyclone Tauktae: 146 onboard barge P305 adrift in Mumbai rescued - Several of the ONGC's major production installations and drilling rigs are located in the area that felt the brunt of the cyclone.