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Rudraprayag landslide: 19 people presumed dead after being washed away in Mandakini river
Chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami took stock of the incident at the disaster control room in Dehradun and instructed officials to speed up the ongoing relief and rescue work
Nineteen people are feared dead after three shops were washed away in the Mandakini river triggered by a landslide near Gaurikund on the Kedarnath yatra route in Rudraprayag district of Uttarakhand, a senior official said. The incident took place at Daat Puliya around 12:15am on the intervening night of Thursday and Friday.
“Nineteen people are missing after three shops were washed away in the river due to a landslide near Gaurikund,” Rudraprayag disaster management officer Nandan Singh Rajwar said, adding that those missing are believed to be the shopkeepers, and not pilgrims.
Personnel from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), the police department and district administration are carrying out rescue and search operations.
The Rudraprayag district administration have identified the missing people as Ashu (23), Priyanshu Chamoli (18), Ranbir Singh (28), Vinod (26), Mulayam (26), and seven members of the Nepali family – Amar Bohra (29), wife Anita Bohra (26), and their five minor children.
SDRF officials said they had to temporarily halt the rescue and search operation at night due to continuous rainfall and boulder falls.
“On Friday morning, we restarted the operation to search for the missing persons,” SDRF media in-charge Lalita Negi said, adding that one team was also conducting a search operation at Kund Barrage, 2km downstream from the site of the landslide.
Chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami took stock of the incident at the disaster control room in Dehradun and instructed officials to speed up the ongoing relief and rescue work.
He also inquired about the water level of major rivers in the state and said an alert should be issued in flood-prone areas and people living in such places should be shifted to safer locations.
Dhami said that people living in buildings and kutcha houses built around sensitive areas in landslide zones should also be relocated.
“The search operation is being conducted to find the missing people in the Gaurikund incident. Their relatives are being contacted. SDRF, district administration, and other official teams are present on the spot. Government and local administration are fully prepared to deal with any situation,” the CM said.
According to a bulletin released by IMD at 8.30 am, Uttarakhand received 20.4mm rainfall in the last 24 hours, recording a positive departure of 46 per cent. Rudraprayag district, where Gaurikund is located, received 23.7mm rainfall in the last 24 hours against a normal of 22.6mm.
