4 Of The 50 Workers Rescued From Uttarakhand Avalanche Site Dead; 5 Still Missing

Dehradun: The Army has confirmed the deaths of four General Reserve Engineer Force (GREF) workers, rescued from the avalanche site in Chamoli, Uttarakhand.

Of the 55 workers trapped under snow since Friday morning, 50 were rescued till Saturday evening.

“We rushed the injured to the military hospital in Joshimath. Unfortunately, four of them could not be saved. A search is on for the remaining five,” a Ministry of Defence (MoD) spokesperson said in Dehradun on Saturday.

GREF is a unit of the Border Roads Organisation (BRO), which is under the MoD.

The workers were engaged to clear snow and repair roads, close to the border with China, when disaster struck. Their camp, consisting of two containers and a shed, was located between the Mana village in Chamoli and Badrinath.

All the workers were possibly still in bed when a glacier burst at Badrinath Dham triggered the massive avalanche that crushed the camp around 5.30-6 am on Friday.

Rescue operations were hampered due to incessant heavy snowfall and smaller avalanches that carried on throughout Friday. Despite constraints, 47 trapped men were pulled out by the rescue teams till Saturday morning. Three more were brought out later in the day.

The camp is apparently covered under 6-7 feet of snow.

An Mi-17 V5 and three Cheetah helicopters of the Indian Air Force (IAF), two helicopters of the Uttarakhand government and an air ambulance from All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Rishikesh have been pressed into service to move the injured workers to medical facilities.

“The IAF is also bringing in a drone-based ‘Buried Object Detection System’ to the spot to help in the rescue efforts,” an official said.