Rain fury on Tuesday claimed 11 more lives in the north India,
taking the toll to 73, even as 71,440 pilgrims bound for the Himalayan
shrines remained stranded in monsoon-ravaged Uttarakhand apart from 1700
people stuck in Himachal Pradesh.
Though rescue efforts picked up momentum in flash flood and landslide
hit areas of Himachal and Uttarakhand with a let up in the rains and
decrease in water level in the Ganga and its tributaries, the whole of
Uttarakhand still wore a marooned and devastated look.
Flashfloods, cloudbursts and subsequent landslips have claimed 44
lives in Uttarakhand, left as many injured and fully damaged 175 houses
across the state.
Rudraprayag was the worst hit where 20 people perished and 73
building including 40 hotels along the banks of the Alaknanda were swept
away by the swirling waters of the river.
A huge number of pilgrims totalling 71,440, who were bound for the
Himalayan shrines of Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri are
stranded in Rudraprayag, Chamoli and Uttarkashi districts with the
famous char dham yatra still suspended due to massive damage to the road
network.
The maximum number of 27040 devotees are stranded in Chamoli, 25000
in Rudraprayag and 9,850 in Uttarkashi, Disaster Management authorities
said.
Officials said water level of Bhagirathi in Uttarkashi and Ganga in Rishikesh had begun to recede.
In Himachal Pradesh, chief minister Virbhadra Singh, who was stranded
in tribal Kinnaur district for nearly 60 hours due to landslides
triggered by incessant rains, was evacuated this morning even as 1700
people remained stranded at various places.
A chopper hired by Congress party airlifted the chief minister this
morning as rains abated and weather cleared this morning and about a
dozen persons, including some old and ailing persons were brought to
Rampur in the state helicopter, officials said.
Television footage showed bridges, houses and other buildings
crashing down and being washed away by the swirling waters. A swollen
river is seen engulfing a giant statue of Lord Shiva in the tourist city
of Rishikesh in Uttarakhand.
Fresh rains in Uttarakhand were hampering rescue efforts, with teams
from the national disaster management authority camping in the popular
pilgrimage town of Haridwar awaiting air lift to the worst-affected
districts, officials said.
The state government was also readying food parcels and drinking
water to be dropped by helicopters to remote villages cut-off by the
torrential rains.
"The situation is very grim. The meteorological office has predicted
that the rain will continue for another three days at least," government
official Amit Chandola was quoted by television stations as saying.
In the neighbouring state of Himachal Pradesh, at least eight people
were feared dead, a local police official said by telephone.
Houses are submerged as trucks flow in flood waters of the Bhagirathi River in Shrinagar district in Uttarakhand. (AP Photo)
A few villages close to the border with China have also seen
unseasonal snowfall, leaving dozens of shepherds and thousands of sheep
stranded, a village headman said.
The met department predicted more rains over the next two days in northern India.
Sources say more than 60,000 people are stranded at different places
on the route of the Chardham Yatra - Yamunotri, Gangotri, Badrinath and
Kedarnath.
The onward trip to Hemkunt Saheb - the sacred pilgrimage for Sikhs - has also been abandoned for now, officials say.
At many places while the gushing rivers have washed away roads and
caused land slides, flood waters has entered several villages on banks
of the Alaknanda river.
The Kailash Mansarovar Yatra has also been stopped for now.
The Ganga is flowing two metres above the danger mark and an alert
has been sounded and people have been asked to desist from bathing in
the holy river.
People gather at the site of a road accident on the Hardiwar-Mana national highway, in Uttarakhand. (AP Photo)
Army officials say bases have been made for rescue operations in Bareilly and Sarsawa.
Members of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) are however
unable to move further from Dehradun owing to inclement weather.
Fourteen choppers of the Indian Army have also been put on standby for rescue operations.
Uttarakhand chief minister Vijay Bahuguna while admitting that the
situation was "grave", said that the government was working swiftly to
rescue people stranded at different places and providing relief to the
flood effected areas.
The public works department (PWD) of Uttarakhand has confirmed "serious damage" to 450 roads in the state.
Regional Met director of Uttarakhand Anand Sharma said the situation
might slightly improve from Tuesday evening onwards as the rains are
likely to subside.
Several trains, including Sriganganagar Express, Hemkund Express and
Janshatabdi have been cancelled due to flooding of tracks, a railway
official said.
A view of the overflowing Mandakini River damaging houses in Kedarnath Valley in Rudraprayag district. (PTI Photo)
Incessant rains in Nainital since Monday has raised the level of the
lake by five feet and most tourists were forced to spend their holiday
indoors.
In Uttar Pradesh, the Malan and Ganga rivers are in spate in western
parts of the state and the army has been called in Mandawar and Rawli
areas of Bijnore.
Several houses collapsed in Sardhana area of Meerut while 18 people
were killed in Saharanpur in roof collapse and a car was washed away by
rain water.
The rains, which began Saturday night, have continued for the past
three days. The Met department said the rains in the month of June have
since broken an 88-year record. Between Saturday and Sunday, Dehra Dun
received 220 mm of rains and by evening, another 220 mm of rains.
The worst-hit areas include Rudraprayag and Uttarkashi, where
Mandakini river is in spate. In Rambada, the river water entered the
market area.
With the met department having forecast more thunder showers, the
already grave situation may worsen with more landslides as the hillsides
have become weak following incessant rain, said the National Disaster
Response Force (NDRF).
In Himachal, five members of a family, including three children, were
buried alive early Monday when boulders fell on their house at Chagaon
village near Tapri, some 220 km from Shimla, Superintendent of Police G.
Shiva Kumar said over phone.
The entire Kinnaur district has been experiencing heavy rain for the
past two days, while Pooh block experienced over one feet of snow, which
locals said was untimely.
Shiva Kumar said five other people died in various landslide and rain-related incidents in the district since Sunday.
All the deaths in Uttar Pradesh were in Saharanpur, where many
pilgrims are trapped in the Shakumbhari Devi area following the rain and
floods.
Among the dead were a chief medical officer from Punjab and his
family of five, who drowned after being caught in raging river waters.
Flooding has been reported from Saharanpur, Bijnore, Muzaffarnagar,
Gorakhpur, Siddharthanagar, Azamgarh, Lakhimpur Kheri, Ballia and
Varanasi.
Delhi saw heavy rains over the weekend and intermittent showers
continued Monday morning. The city received 58.5 mm of rain from 8.30
p.m. Sunday to 8.30 a.m. Monday, leaving roads inundated and traffic
snarls in the morning rush hour.
In Haryana, rescue teams Monday evacuated 52 villagers, including 15
children, from a riverine island in Yamunanagar district while rescue
operations were on in Karnal district where nearly 200 people were
stranded in Shergarh Tapu and Chandrao villages.
The Yamuna river, which enters Haryana from Uttarakhand at Hathnikund
barrage in Yamunanagar district, had swelled since early Saturday after
over 800,000 cusecs of water was released Monday morning through the
Hathnikund barrage.
With the water expected to reach Delhi on Tuesday, the city
government Monday began evacuating people from low-lying areas along the
banks of the Yamuna.
The monsoon this year had set over Kerala on schedule June 1 and
advanced fast, covering the southern, eastern and central states within
two weeks.
(With inputs from AFP, PTI, IANS)
Distraught relatives of passengers wait outside the office of the company which ran the bus that caught fire on Wednesday
Eight
pilgrims, mostly from Kanpur city of Uttar Pradesh, were killed and 42
others injured when the private bus in which they were travelling rolled
down a gorge in Himachal Pradesh, police said Sunday.
The death toll in a an accident in which a bus skidded off the road and
plunged into the Beas river rose to 38, officials said Thursday. Seven
people were still critical.
As
many as 21 people were killed and 41 others were rescued when an
overcrowded bus fell into Bagdi river in Madhya Pradesh's Dewas
district.
In a tragic incident late Tuesday night, eight children were killed and
over a dozen injured when a speeding truck overturned at Nagla Patwari
near the bypass in Aligarh, 335 km from here, police said.
