The residents of 15 villages in Bageshwar, Uttarakhand, have been cut off from the district headquarters following massive landslides on Friday.
The affected villagers said it usually took around five hours to clean roadblocks, but they had been isolated from Bageshwar town for over 48 hours this time.
“The electricity supply was also disrupted in our villages. The officials started cleaning the roads and restoring normal traffic after 48 hours,” Santosh Negi, a villager, told local reporters.
He said the lack of mobile connectivity, which snapped because of bad weather, prevented them from informing the officials about the landslides and blocked roads.
“Our children rarely go to school in the monsoon season over fears of landslides. Imagine what will happen if someone falls ill in our villages. The nearest hospital is 15km away and we have to cross this road to reach there. This is the reason we cannot afford to stay disconnected from the town for long,” he said.
Sikha Suyal, district disaster management officer, said: “Excavators have been pressed into service and we hope to restore normal traffic soon.”
Last week, Bageshwar district magistrate Ashish Bhatgain had suspended two officers of the public works department over the delay in cleaning a 3km stretch of blocked road in Kapkot, Dharamghar and Sangarh villages following a landslide.
“We have suspended junior engineer Jitesh Malkani and assistant engineer Ashish Rawat. Quick relief in the event of any disaster is our priority,” Bhatgain had told reporters in Bageshwar and warned the departments concerned against a lackadaisical approach.
Bageshwar is a tourist destination in summer, but does not fall on the Char Dham Yatra route. No casualties were reported in Friday’s landslides because heavy rainfall had confined the villagers to their houses located slightly away from the roads.