The vertical approach was one of the at least five options on which preparatory work had begun some days back, as anxiety mounted over the fate of the men trapped in the under-construction tunnel on Uttarakhand's Char Dham route.
Tourism is badly affected. Entire apple orchards have been washed away. 2 million people are threatened with loss of livelihood.
The storm is likely to impact Mumbai, Thane and other coastal districts of Maharashtra like Raigad and Palghar along with Valsad, Navsari, Surat, Bhavnagar and Bharuch districts of Gujarat and Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. Preparations for the impending cyclone were discussed at a meeting of the National Crisis Management Committee (NCMC), headed by Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba, a home ministry statement said.
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh posed questions for the prime minister ahead of his rallies in Karnataka.
Local train services came to a halt between Badlapur and Ambarnath section in Maharashtra's Thane district adjoining Mumbai due to water-logging on railway tracks after heavy rains, officials said.
The five-storey building -- Tareq Garden -- in Mahad town, around 170 km from Mumbai, collapsed on Monday evening. According to a police official, the rescue operation was called off around 11.30 am on Wednesday.
Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde led the nation in paying tributes to the twenty bravehearts, who died in Tuesday's chopper crash while rescuing stranded people in flood-ravaged Uttarakhand.
A senior Uttarakhand official at the site said drilling was complete.
Four National Disaster Response Force teams are engaged in rescue work, he added. The village has around 50 houses, of which 17 were buried under the landslide, the official said.
The police said the child was shifted to a hospital in Indi where he was given preliminary treatment and was later shifted to a district hospital. He is currently stated to be stable, they said.
Very heavy rains are expected over north Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, east Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Sikkim in the next 48 hours, with cyclonic storm Phailin now closer to the Chattisgarh-Odisha border, the National Disaster Management Authority has said.
The Centre said that there was no legal provision to declare a disaster as a national calamity, amid demands for declaring the floods as a national disaster.
About 1.82 lakh people have been evacuated to safe places by the rescue teams in last 48 hours.
With this, the death count in the August 2 night tragedy has gone up to 28, while 12 people are still missing.
Rajasthan's three districts -- Jalore, Sirohi and Barmer -- are reeling under a flood-like situation due to heavy rainfall caused by cyclonic storm Biparjoy, an official said on Sunday.
We need to have patience as it is a dangerous operation,NDMA member Lt Gen (retd) Syed Ata Hasnain said.
Wing Commander Raveendran and flight steward Sargeant Iyer, though shaken and injured, managed to open the rear door of the aircraft and shouted for Prime Minister Morarji Desai and the passengers in the forward cabin to exit in haste since they suspected that fire would engulf the aircraft.
The number of subsidence-affected homes rose to 678 while 27 more families were evacuated to safety, a bulletin from the Disaster Management Authority in Chamoli said, adding so far 82 families have been shifted to safe locations in the town.
'You are talking as if Patna has been the only place which has suffered on account of heavy rain. What happened in Mumbai and America when these places were battered by similar downpour?'
In the last 24 hours, eight people have died after drowning in flood waters -- two each in Barpeta and Karimganj districts, one each in Darrang, Hailakandi, Nalbari and Sonitpur districts and eight people are still missing.
The flood situation in Assam deteriorated on Thursday with one more person losing his life and nearly 7.18 lakh people in 27 districts remaining affected by the deluge, an official bulletin said.
Since January this year, there have been 983 incidents of forest fire in the state affecting 1,292 hectares of land, they said.
The apex court urged the central government to update the drought management manual by December 31.
The injured -- 130 -- cannot go back to work nor do they have homes to return to. Many of them refuse to leave the hospital while some of their relatives sleep in the hospital corridors. Apart from their physical injuries, the trauma of seeing their family members swept away haunts them as does the loss of all their possessions. But the BJP-Sena government remains indifferent to this human crisis.
Thirteen teams of the National Disaster Response Force and three of the State Disaster Response Force were deployed in vulnerable districts of the state, a disaster management department report said.
The IMD director said, the cyclonic storm Tauktae in the Arabian sea is moving away from the Kerala coast and is now approaching the Karnataka coast.
Rescuers pulled out more bodies from the muddy debris of disastrous landslide taking the toll to over 80.
The Army, National Disaster Response Force and local rescue teams have been called in for the rescue work, the Kinnaur deputy commissioner said.
Three national highways in Kutch, Navsari and Dang districts were blocked due to damage caused by rains. Fifty one state highways and over 400 panchayat roads have also been damaged, state Disaster Management Minister Rajendra Trivedi told reporters.
Seven people were killed and four injured after a seven-storey building collapsed in suburban Santacruz in Mumbai on Friday, officials said fearing more casualties.
"The new food supply pipeline has also made it easier to supply better food in larger quantities to them, which is a good thing. Otherwise the situation remains the same," said Negi, who spoke to his brother.
The intensity of Cyclone Phailin on Sunday reduced significantly to 90-100 kilometres per hour at Odisha's Gopalpur where the cyclone hit at a speed of over 200 kmph on Saturday night.
The Tamil Nadu State Disaster Management Authority, in a tweet, said as per the latest updates #GajaCyclone is likely to have landfall between 8 pm and 11 pm on Thursday in all probability in Nagapattinam district.
The flood situation affected nearly 26.5 lakh people across 28 districts.
'The entire public needs to be evacuated immediately. Any day, the entire town can collapse.'
The Yamuna surged to a record 208.48 metres at 8 am, the Central Water Commission said on Thursday, adding that it is likely to rise to 208.75 metres by 4 pm.
The torrential rain that took place between September 27 and 30 has created a flood-like situation in 15 districts of the state, including the state capital.
'38,162 volunteer doctors, including retired government, Armed Forces Medical Services, public sector undertaking or private doctors have signed up with the government to battle COVID-19 pandemic'
A day before the end of the fourth phase of lockdown, the home ministry on Saturday issued new guidelines for the phased reopening of all activities outside containment zones till June 30.
Karnataka State Disaster Management Authority Commissioner Manoj Rajan said, 'We have got a message that a group of 31 people hailing from Karnataka are stranded in Sudan. We have informed the Ministry of External Affairs about it.'
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