'Me and my boys had never ever thought in our wildest dreams that we would be taking part in a rescue mission of this kind.' IAF Veteran Air Commodore Nitin Sathe, a helicopter pilot himself, reports on how the air force rescued those trapped in the Deoghar cable cars disaster last fortnight.
Eye-witnesses said the blast took place at around 7 am. They said a noise of the blast was heard and the 20-year-old building was reduced to rubble.
The body, located 200 feet away from the bottom of the mine, was brought out using the Indian Navy's underwater remotely operated vehicle and an National Disaster Response Force boat on Wednesday, said operations spokesman R Susngi.
As many as 48 persons were injured in these incidents and 25 still missing, while so far, 2,29,074 persons have been evacuated from the flood and rain-affected affected areas and moved to safer places, the government said in a statement in Mumbai.
India on Tuesday pressed six more teams of National Disaster Response Force personnel into its relief and rescue operations in Nepal.
The disaster management department said that the state government has urged the Indian Air Force to send a helicopter for air-dropping of food packets and other relief material in marooned areas.
The depth of water from the surface till the bottom of the pit is expected to be over 150 feet, Navy officials said.
State home minister said violation of rules has been noticed in the construction of the building.
Two more bodies were on Sunday found in the search and rescue operations which continued for fourth day following the collapse of a bridge on Mumbai-Goa highway near Mahad in Raigad district, taking the death toll to 26.
Rigorous pumping of water from the nearby abandoned mines is expected to begin on Friday.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday took stock of the flood situation in Tamil Nadu and discussed it with his cabinet colleagues, including the Home and Finance ministers.
Two heavy duty 140-tonne cranes were pressed into service at the crack of the dawn to clear derailed coaches, from which the survivors were rescued and bodies pulled out till late Saturday night.
Over 50 employees of the company whose office was located on the first floor were rescued while 27 bodies have been found.
Uttar Pradesh's police helpline recently got a strange call when an elderly person made an 'urgent request' for rasogullas. The cop who answered the phone thought it was a prank. But when a volunteer delivered the sweets in Lucknow's Hazratganj, it was found that the man in his 80s really needed them.
The depression formed over Lakshadweep in the Arabian Sea would turn into a cyclonic storm in the next 24 hours and reach near the Gujarat coast on the morning of May 18, officials said.
An unspecified number of people were evacuated from coastal areas of Odisha where Jagatsinghpur, Kendrapara, Bhadrak and Balasore were likely to experience heavy rainfall accompanied by high-velocity winds, particularly on May 19 and 20, IMD Director General Mrutyunjay Mohapatra said.
The depression over southwest and adjoining southeast Bay of Bengal moved west-northwestwards with a speed of 11 kmph and lay centred at 1130 hrs of Monday over the same region, about 520 km east-southeast of Puducherry and 560 km southeast of Chennai, the Indian Meterological Department said.
A red alert has been sounded in three districts of Idukki, Thrissur and Palakkad in Kerala.
This year, the festival is being celebrated amid the Covid-19 pandemic, and many devotees said that they prayed to Chhathi Maiyya to keep everyone safe from the virus. "I am keeping fast without water for four days. We will pray to Chhathi Maiyya to keep everyone safe from COVID-19," says Rinku Devi, a devotee, after taking a dip in the river.
The bus was carrying 34 staff members of an agriculture university in the Konkan region. It fell into a 500-feet deep gorge at Ambenali Ghat near Poladpur town, District Collector Vijay Suryawanshi said.
Incessant rains have claimed as many as 29 lives in Andhra Pradesh during the past four days while more than 72,000 people have been evacuated from low-lying areas.
Centre ordered release of Rs 1,086 crore to four states as advance financial assistance for undertaking preventive and relief measures to deal with the cyclone.
The rescuers had to make hectic efforts to remove the mangled frames of furniture, including large sofas, from the rubble at the mishap site.
The Indian Meteorological Department has issued a warning about havoc rainfall or a cloud burst hitting Bihar's flood-affected districts in the next 24 to 48 hours, officials said on Sunday.
The cyclone, according to an IMD report early Sunday, is developing into a severe cyclonic storm over the Bay of Bengal and can potentially become a very severe cyclonic storm in the next 24 hours, S N Pradhan, the chief of NDRF said in New Delhi.
A blanket of thick black smoke engulfed the area causing panic among locals and those visiting Aero India on its fourth day.
National Disaster Response Force personnel left the spot, while State Disaster Management Department personnel continued their rescue work at the accident site with cranes, earth movers and drilling machines.
Here's a recap of events that occurred in India in the past 24 hours.
With normal life thrown out of gear by the region's worst weather disasters, the authorities scrambled in various parts of the state to restore normalcy.
Fourteen bodies have been recovered so far as massive rescue operations continued at the building collapse site at Mugalivakkam near Porur in Chennai.
Many elderly villagers said it was for the first time in their decades-old life that they were seeing and experiencing such severe rainfall.
He said while the state government had sought Rs 8,481 crore as central assistance, the Centre has provided Rs 940.92 crore.
Kerala State Disaster Management Authority has warned about the possibilities of landslides in the hilly areas already hit by extremely heavy rainfall in the past few days and directed people living in the region and government authorities to be vigilant.
The operator, Kishore Bhagwat Lokhande, 24, who stays with his parents and two siblings near the bus stand in Mahad, said he got a call on Monday evening from his office, asking him to rush to Kajalpura area as a five-storey building has collapsed.
The National Disaster Response Force, Navy and Coast Guard officials have so far been able to locate only a signboard of one of the missing ST buses .
He said all necessary medical help should be given to the injured, including treatment in India, if required.
Political leaders across parties reacted to the Air India Express aircraft crash, which took place on Friday evening at Kozhikode airport.
Two persons were killed and nine injured when an 11-storeyed under construction building collapsed near suburban Porur on Saturday with rescue efforts on by multiple agencies, including National Disaster Response Force.
People in Srinagar trying to survive the fury of the floods, which have already claimed 200 lives, are angry and emotional. On Wednesday, four helicopters, carrying relief material, could not land after angry locals threatened to throw stones at them.
The death toll in the massive explosion at an industrial unit in Dombivali township of the district has risen to six while 159 injured were undergoing treatment, a senior official said on Friday.
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