At least 35 labourers working on a stretch of the road to Badrinath Dham were missing on Friday evening after an avalanche in Uttarakhand, amid the question why they had not been evacuated despite snowfall and avalanche alerts
since Monday.

While Chamoli district magistrate Sandeep Tiwari said in the afternoon that 16 of 57 trapped labourers had been rescued, army headquarters said in the evening that 10 had been rescued after the 7.15am avalanche and 35 were still missing.

The labourers were involved in a road-widening project between the Mana and Mana Pass villages in Chamoli district, near the Tibet border, to facilitate pilgrimage to the nearby Badrinath shrine, state disaster management department sources said.

They said the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) had handed the project of widening a 50km stretch to a private sub-contractor. The deadline for completion was May 4 when Badrinath Dham, closed during the winter, was to be reopened for pilgrims, they added.

On Monday, the India Meteorological Department, Dehradun, sounded an orange alert about heavy snowfall at altitudes of 3,200 metres and above. Officials said the accident site was at 4,500 metres.

Army personnel conduct the rescue operation in Chamoli, Uttarakhand, on Friday. PTI photo

A PTI report said the Defence Geoinformatics Research Establishment in Chandigarh too had issued a 24-hour avalanche warning at 5pm on Thursday for places located above 2,400 metres in Chamoli, Uttarkashi, Rudraprayag, Pithoragarh and Bageshwar districts.

Chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, asked why “the labourers were there” despite the alerts, said “such matters can be discussed later” but the priority now was to rescue those trapped.

Defence ministry sources said the accident site was “about 3-4km” from the Badrinath shrine and that Mana was 3km from the Tibet border.

An army statement said the avalanche buried workers inside eight “containers” and one “shed” at a BRO labourers’ camp.

“The Indian Army’s swift response teams, comprising more than 100 personnel from Ibex Brigade, were immediately mobilised comprising doctors, ambulances and plant equipment,” it said.

It added that the teams “located five containers and successfully rescued 10 individuals”, of whom four “are reported to be in critical condition”. A search is on for the remaining three containers.

“Due to subsequent small-scale avalanches in the area, progress in rescue operations is slow and being carried out with due caution. Heavy snowfall continues in the region,” the army said.

In a separate statement, the army’s Surya Command, which operates in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, too said the Ibex Brigade had “swiftly launched rescue operations despite continuing heavy snowfall and avalanches”.

District magistrate Tiwari said: “We are unable to make direct contact with anybody at the avalanche site because satellite phones don’t work there. It’s not possible to deploy helicopters because (of continuing) snowfall.”

Dhami said the avalanche was triggered by a “glaciercollapse”.

Uttarakhand government sources said the BRO had for the past two years been carrying out a project involving road construction, road widening and the building of a small bridge along the Alaknanda river. It had given the widening project to a private company.

Vinod Suman, state disaster management secretary, said the road to the avalanche site was under six feet of snow.