Jakarta Globe – AFP, Aug 02, 2014
Rescuers continued digging Saturday despite ‘very slim chances’ of finding any more people alive in the mud and debris from a major landslide in western India, where 73 have been killed.
 |
| Rescuers search for landslide victims in torrential rain. (AFP Photo) |
Rescuers continued digging Saturday despite ‘very slim chances’ of finding any more people alive in the mud and debris from a major landslide in western India, where 73 have been killed.
Seventy–three
bodies and eight survivors have now been pulled from the site where a village
once stood in a remote part of western Maharashtra state, but incessant rains,
marshy terrain and strong winds have hampered rescue efforts.
“Whole
night the operation was on. We were able to recover 73 dead, eight alive,” Alok
Awasthi, commandant of the National Disaster Response Force [NDRF], told NDTV
news channel adding half the work had been completed.
“Around 80
people are still feared trapped… chances of survival are very very slim.”
The NDRF
has said about 160 people were thought to have been living in the dozens of
houses damaged when a hill gave way and cascaded onto their village of Malin.
The force,
which mobilised 378 rescue workers to help with the search, worked into the
night and entered its fourth day in a desperate hunt for any more survivors
after lights powered by portable generators were set up.
The rescue
operation could continue another two days due to difficult conditions, state
relief and rehabilitation minister Patangrao Kadam said, according to the Press
Trust of India news agency.
Grieving
relatives have been rushing to identify bodies and attending mass cremations at
their village after losing whole families as tonnes of earth and trees came
crashing down onto the homes below on July 30.
“I’m
shell-shocked… our roots [at Malin] have been wiped out in an instant,” Vilas
Jhanjre, a factory worker, told The Hindu newspaper after he failed to find his
parents’ bodies at the wiped–out village and nearby hospital.
“Life
ceases to have meaning without one’s parents.”
Dramatic
footage of the landslide showed a chunk of hillside giving way with a cascade
of mud, rocks and trees, sending up clouds of dust below.
Disaster
experts and Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan have blamed the
landslide on deforestation and construction work on the hills.
While
India’s annual rains are a lifeline for the economy, flooding and building
collapses are frequent during the monsoon season.
A landslide
in the eastern state of Odisha on Thursday cut off about a dozen villages,
while another in the northern Himalayan state of Uttarakhand killed at least
five people.
Uttarakhand
was hit by a landslide and flooding disaster last year that is thought to have
killed nearly 6,000 pilgrims, tourists and others.
A separate
landslide struck a village in northeastern Nepal Saturday killing at least
seven people with dozens missing.
Agence France-Presse
No comments:
Post a Comment