Political leaders across parties reacted to the Air India Express aircraft crash, which took place on Friday evening at Kozhikode airport.
While rescue efforts are on in full swing, the narrow tunnel and the massive slush that was brought down by the glacial flood are hampering rescue operations, confirm Swati Bhadauria, the district collector of Chamoli, and Yashwant Singh Chauhan, the superintendent of police.
The incident is said to have occurred in the wee hours when a huge mound of earth fell on the 'row houses' and two children and five women were among the deceased, most of whom were plantation workers from neighbouring Tamil Nadu.
The SP of Chamoli district, which faced the brunt of the glacier break in Uttarakhand, provides insights about the rescue operations.
The local police said that the building was undergoing some modifications when it collapsed.
The Centre on Friday assured all help to flood-ravaged Assam in dealing with the crisis situation in the state where over 8.5 lakh people have been rendered homeless and 22 lives lost so far.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi took stock of the situation, and assured all possible assistance to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy. The prime minister also chaired a meeting of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) to assess the situation.
Altogether 76 people have lost their lives in floods spread over 23 districts in Bihar since June this year, State Disaster Management department secretary Vyasji said on Thursday.
Over 20,000 people were evacuated to safer places in these three districts. State capital Mumbai too witnessed water-logging in many areas after overnight rains on Thursday.
After inaugurating a 10-bed make-shift hospital of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) in Ghaziabad near Delhi, he said India began formulating its strategy against coronavirus from January 8 as soon as the world came to know about the outbreak of the disease.
Here's a recap of the events from the past 48 hours.
The incident comes days after the decomposed and mangled body of a three-year-old boy, Sujith Wilson, was pulled out from deep inside an unused borewell, after a futile 80-hour attempt to save the child who had fallen in while playing near his house in Nadukattupatti in Tiruchirappalli.
Teams of army and National Disaster Response Force on Thursday morning rescued the 9-year-old girl and her father from the building's debris. The duo received minor injuries in the incident, a senior official said, adding that total seven persons were killed in the incident and 18 injured.
Four teams of the National Disaster Response Force have been deployed for relief and rescue operations in the worst flood-affected districts of Assam. The floods have affected nearly two lakh people and claimed four lives. According to the NDRF control room, relief and rescue operations in the districts of Lakhimpur, Dhubri, Sonitpur and Jorhat have been assisted by the force by deploying one team in each of these districts.
According to the home ministry's National Emergency Response Centre, 138 people have died in Maharashtra, 125 in Kerala, 116 in West Bengal, 52 in Gujarat and 34 in Assam due to the floods and rains.
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.
Twenty-four people, most of them attending a funeral, were killed and 17 others injured when the roof of a shelter at a cremation ground in Uttar Pradesh's Muradnagar collapsed on Sunday, police said.
As several more people are feared dead in the incident, the search operation launched by the teams of police and the National Disaster Response Force is still on, an official said.
Gale-force winds, heavy rainfall and high tidal waves swept the coastal belt of Kerala, Karnataka and Goa as Cyclone Tauktae hurtled northwards towards Gujarat on Sunday, leaving four people dead in Karnataka and two in Goa, damaging hundreds of houses, uprooting electricity poles and trees and forcing evacuation.
Around 400 personnel of National Disaster Response Force and a team of 20 doctors, sent to Sikkim for rescue and relief operations, have not been able to yet reach the quake-hit areas due to blockade of roads following landslides, officials said on Monday.
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.
Heavy rains lashed Saurashtra region and Kutch district creating a flash flood like situation in Bhuj town, where over 15,000 people were evacuated by local administration, National Disaster Response Force was deployed and Army and Border Security Force have been asked to remain on stand by.
The home minister held a video conference with Chief Ministers of Gujarat and Maharashtra -- Vijay Rupani and Uddhav Thackeray respectively -- and Administrator of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Praful Patel, and assured them all central help in view of the impending cyclone, an official statement said in New Delhi.
"This is our most massive deployment in any flood disaster till date. Now we have close to 1,600 personnel with 21 officers and 200 rubberised inflatable boats. We have rescued over 16,000 people to safer locations till now," the DG said.
Environmental organisation Greenpeace claimed that its recent findings -- about sources of radiation existing in the scrap market in Delhi's Mayapuri area -- has forced the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, the National Disaster Response Force and the Narora Atomic Power Plant team to re-start their decontamination procedures in Mayapuri.Exposure to radioactive material Cobalt-60 had claimed one life and caused injuries to 11 people in April.
The CM announced ex gratia of Rs 4 lakh each to the next of kins of those killed.
The body has been detected inside the 370-foot-deep coal mine in Meghalaya's East Jaintia Hills district,
About 1.82 lakh people have been evacuated to safe places by the rescue teams in last 48 hours.
The United Arab Emirates PM has come out in support for deluge-hit Kerala.
Sportspeople across the country offered condolences to the families affected in the Visakhapatnam gas leak tragedy on Thursday.
The Santacruz weather station in suburban Mumbai recorded a whopping 242 mm rainfall in the 24 hours ending at 8.30 am Thursday.
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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.
Six Indian Air Force aircraft carrying relief material, rescue workers and doctors landed in Leh on Saturday to provide succour to the people of the region affected by cloudburst and flash floods.
The National Disaster Response Force, which is undertaking neutralisation of chlorine gas from cylinders at Mumbai Port Trust the gas leakage incident, said 80 more hazardous gas cylinders were found in the MPT premises in south Mumbai. Among the 136 cylinders lying in the MPT since 13 years -- one of which leaked on July 14 -- nearly 100 cylinders contained chlorine gas, the NDRF said.
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 prime minister also asserted that in view of the COVID-19 situation, the states must ensure that people follow all health precautions such as wearing of face masks, hand sanitisation and maintaining an adequate physical distance with each other while undertaking rescue efforts.
However, some areas in south Mumbai, which witnessed a record rain on Wednesday, were still water-logged, they said. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted moderate to heavy rainfall in the city and suburbs and intense showers in some parts of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region in next 24 hours.
The impact of the collision was so severe that the bus dragged the auto-rickshaw along with it and both the vehicles fell into a roadside well, the official said.
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