Relatives of the 30-odd engineers and workers of the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) who are feared trapped inside a sludge-choked tunnel following the flash flood in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district on Sunday gheraoed NTPC and administrative officials at the rescue spot on Friday.
The relatives alleged that the relief and rescue operation had been “shoddy” and said their patience was being tested.
“We are here since Sunday evening. Since then the officials have been telling us that they would be able to reach the trapped people within a day. There is no water, no food and no hope for those who could still be alive and hearing the voices of the machines deployed to clean the tunnel,” said Dina Nath, whose nephew Ranjan Kumar is among those feared trapped.
“Six days is a very long time for those trapped. We fail to understand why we are technologically so backward that we are not able to clean a tunnel to save so many lives,” Dina Nath added.
“We are crying and begging the whole day with officials and politicians to do something, but those coming here look so detached from the crisis. We gheraoed some officials today but they deployed police and the CISF to keep us at bay,” he told reporters.
Shouting slogans against the state government and the NTPC, the protesting group, consisting mostly of women, said the NTPC hydel power project was a “curse” for the people of the area.
“First we lost our fields and now we are losing our men. The project is a curse on us. It is the sixth day and sludge has not been cleared up to even 100 metres inside the tunnel,” one of the protesters, Deveshwari Devi, said.
The CISF and police personnel at the project site stopped the protesting kin 100 metres from the mouth of the tunnel where a massive effort was underway by a combined team of the army, state disaster response force, National Disaster Response Force and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police to reach those stuck inside.
Tapovan’s former pradhan Dharmpal Bajwal, who led the protesters, said four people from his village were missing and their kin were now losing patience.
Since Wednesday, the rescue teams have been able to clear sludge up to around 100 metres inside the tunnel, according to announcements from the government’s emergency control room. The NTPC employees are believed to be trapped around 180 metres inside the tunnel, where they had been working when the flash flood struck.
The rescue work had to be stopped on Wednesday when sludge began to flow back. The rescue effort witnessed another setback on Thursday when black-coloured ice water mixed with mud and sludge came hurtling down the Nanda Devi mountain and raised the water level in the Rishi Ganga river, on whose bank the tunnel’s mouth is located. When work resumed four hours later, the teams hit a roadblock in the form of a thick mesh of wires and a concrete structure.
“We had no option but to deploy the police at the rescue site when the relatives of those feared began protesting on Friday,” said a local government official on the condition of anonymity.
Two more bodies were recovered from the flash flood-hit areas of Chamoli on Friday, taking the toll in the calamity to 38. One body was found amid the rubble at the demolished Rishi Ganga Hydel Project in Raini and the other from Maithana, district administration officials said.
Ashok Kumar, the director-general of police of Uttarakhand, said: “We have recovered 38 bodies and 166 people are still missing. We have not been able to progress much inside the tunnel. Now, we are deploying a machine to drill the tunnel from above.”
The tunnel is located 20 metres below a barrage.
Residents of Raini, the village most affected by the calamity, complained that the rescue teams were yet to start searching for those who had been working on the barrage when it collapsed under the force of water and ice on Sunday.
Ravindra Thapaliyal, a resident, said: “The government’s focus is on those trapped in the tunnel at Tapovan village. Two members of my family were on the barrage when the flash flood struck. They are still missing. There are bloodstains on the barrage. The rescue teams should also look for those missing from the barrage area.”
DGP Kumar said rescue teams had been sent to look for bodies that might be buried along the banks of the river, where the flash flood deposited large amounts of sludge and debris.
Chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat said: “We have got information that a (glacial) lake has formed near Raini village. While there is nothing to worry, we need to be alert. Experts are working on it.”
An eight-member team of scientists from the Geological Survey of India has been formed to inspect the lake, Chamoli district magistrate Swati S. Bhadauria said.
Additional reporting by PTI