At least 1,000 people remain missing almost two weeks after devastating floods struck India's Himalayan region, killing hundreds and leaving tens of thousands of people in need of aid and rehabilitation, a government official said on Friday.
Dubbed a "Himalayan Tsunami" by the Indian media due to the torrents of water that gushed through Uttarakhand, the floods and landslides swept away buildings and bridges and buried roads. The state government revised down the estimated death toll to 580.
Many inland areas, scattered with remote mountain villages, have been cut off. International charities warn the number of deaths and the extent of the devastation are likely to be much greater once roads are cleared and affected areas become accessible.
"We still do not have an exact figure on the missing. So far it appears to be around 1,000 but that figure could likely go up," Bhaskar Anand, secretary of Uttarakhand's Disaster Management Agency, told Thomson Reuters Foundation by telephone.
The region is a popular Hindu pilgrimage destination due to its four temple towns of Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri, which make up the site called "Char Dham Yatra", attracting tens of thousands of devotees from all over India and abroad during the peak summer months.
Army and air force personnel rescuing stranded Hindu pilgrims said they hoped to end the mammoth evacuation in the next few days, weather permitting. They will then shift their focus to relief work, clearing roads and pathways and rebuilding infrastructure.
Over 100,000 mainly Indian pilgrims have been evacuated by land and air since heavy pre-monsoon rains triggered floods and landslides on June 15 and 16. Some local media organisations say the operation is the biggest evacuation in India's modern history.
"The information that we are getting is that between 2,000 to 3,000 pilgrims remain to be evacuated," Group Captain Sundeep Mehta, an Indian Air Force spokesman stationed at an air base in Gauchar town, said in a telephone interview.
"The weather here has meant that not many helicopters can take off today, but those survivors that are able are being taken down by foot."
Search for Missing
Local television channels have been running tickers with helpline numbers for relatives searching for their loved ones.
Families from different parts of the country, whose relatives had gone on the pilgrimage, told reporters they had not heard from them since the deluge started as phone lines were down.
Posters with pictures of missing people have been put up on public notice boards across Uttarakhand and local government websites showed photographs of unidentified corpses recovered from the disaster zone.
A medical expert stationed in the temple town of Kedarnath, one of the worst affected areas, told Thomson Reuters Foundation he and his colleagues were trying to identify and dispose of bodies through mass cremations in line with Hindu last rites - an arduous task.
Many bodies could not be photographed due to the extent of decomposition, while others had heads severed or were badly mutilated, he said. Officials were collecting samples of skin and hair to be used later for DNA matching with family members searching for their missing relatives.
The Times of India on Friday reported that 26 bodies had been found downstream in rivers in the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh, believed to have been carried there by flood waters.
Charity ActionAid India, which has been distributing relief in the districts of Rudraprayag, Chamoli and Tehri, said initial assessments pointed to a final death toll of as many as 5,000 people.
Approximately 300,000 people have had their lives disrupted by the floods, 50,000 have been displaced from their homes and around 10,000 people have been injured, it added in a statement.
"The priority for ActionAid and partners remains helping the families search, locate and file missing persons' reports and provide immediate relief in the form of food packets to communities," said ActionAid India's Barsha Chakraborty.
Saturday 29 June 2013
http://bdnews24.com/world/2013/06/29/1000-still-missing-in-himalayan-tsunami
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