Three more bodies were recovered from the National Thermal Power Corporation's flood-ravaged Tapovan-Vishnugad hydel project site on Saturday taking the toll in the February 7 glacial disaster in Uttarakhand to 65, officials said.
Amid downpour, while rescue personnel, including the local civil police hastened to pull out the injured men and women from the aircraft that broke into two big chunks with a deafening sound, passengers were stunned to even comprehend what had happened in a matter of moments.
The rescue operations, which were halted late Tuesday night, resumed on Wednesday morning and two more bodies were retrieved from the canal, which is part of the Bansagar dam project, Sidhi's Additional Superintendent of Police Anjulata Patle said.
Severe cyclonic storm Mandous will cross the coast between north Tamil Nadu and south Andhra Pradesh around December 9 night and early next day, the regional weather office said on Friday.
Over 250 passengers have been rescued, a railway official said.
No immediate relief appears in sight as the India Meteorological Department issued a red alert for six districts which have been already pounded by downpour, forecasting "extremely heavy" rainfall and recommending preventive actions.
Over 200 pilgrims were taken to safety from Badrinath today with the Uttarakhand government saying that only 500 more remained there with adequate food and medical care even as disposal of bodies in affected areas and transportation of relief material posed a fresh challenge.
'Yaas' is likely to cross the Odisha-West Bengal coasts between Paradip and Sagar Islands around noon on May 26 as a very severe cyclonic storm with wind speeds of 155-165 kmph, Kolkata's Regional Meteorological Centre Deputy Director Sanjib Bandopadhyay said.
The NDRF said the building was filled with hazardous carbon monoxide.
The Solicitor General had told the bench that several members of the National Disaster Response Force were working at the site and instead of the army, the government has sent navy personnel there as the mine was submerged in water.
22 bodies, 13 from Kottayam district and 9 from Idukki were recovered from various rain-hit areas while National Disaster Response Force teams continued their rescue operations.
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.
'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.
The search and rescue operations are still underway.
'The prime minister expressed concern and assured all possible help to the state,' CMO said.
The IMD also issued a red alert in the same 10 districts for August 3 also.
The official said his team members had been told that there were few customers at an eatery situated in the ground floor and no one knew the exact numbers.
With the threat of disease outbreak lurking in flood-ravaged Jammu and Kashmir, efforts have been initiated on a war-footing to provide medical staff and medicines even as rescue operations were slightly hampered on Sunday due to return of rains in the Valley.
The massive flood in the Dhauli Ganga river triggered by a glacial burst in Uttarakhand's Chamoli district on Sunday came as a grim reminder of the Kedarnath deluge of 2013 which led to widespread devastation in the ecologically fragile Himalayan region.
A 13.2 MW small hydro project on the Rishiganga river was swept away in the glacier burst in Uttarakhand on Sunday, but there is no danger of floods in the downstream areas as the water level has been contained.
The National Disaster Response Force has mounted the rescue operation along with the police and the fire department.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said he ordered to stop the water outflow from the Bansagar dam so that the water level in the canal can go down, which will aid in rescue operations.
This was the very same house from which two nervous women were dramatically winched up to safety by a brave Navy commando.
A total of 50 people, including 11 from Hyderabad, died in rain-related incidents in the state. Chief Minister K Chandrasekar Rao urged the Centre to release Rs 1,350 crore immediately towards relief work and wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in this connection.
At least 12 labourers were in the under-construction building and all of them are feared trapped, Chief Fire Officer Arun Kumar Singh said.
The Kumaon region, under which Nainital falls, has been the worst hit by the rains which began Sunday night, killing at least 46 people in the state as houses collapsed and bridges were washed away by swollen rivers.
'If a major earthquake of the kind that hit Nepal hits us in Delhi, 35 per cent of our homes would be destroyed.'
The death toll in rain-related incidents has gone up to eight in Telangana's Medak district with a factory worker allegedly getting drowned in flood water following heavy showers.
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.
The two western states, already battling a raging pandemic, which has put their health infrastructure under severe strain, opened new fronts to tackle the fallout of the storm which is expected to make a landfall close to Mumbai on Wednesday. They are likely to be impacted most by the cyclone.
The state government has declared a holiday on Wednesday and Thursday for all private institutions, offices, non-essential services within Outer Ring Road here in view of rains.
The National Disaster Response Force, the Air Force and teams of other agencies have been pressed into service and they have so far rescued 214 stranded people. Over 6,200 people in the region have been shifted to safer places. Ten state highways and many roads have also been damaged.
After undertaking rescue operation in the flood-ravaged Jammu and Kashmir, the National Disaster Response Force is now focusing on relief operations and had deployed 'boat hospitals' in water logged areas to provide health care facilities to the stranded people.
The incident took place around 7.15 pm on Saturday, Tamil Nadu Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan, who visited the spot near Kanthanchavadi, told reporters.
An estimated 1.5 lakh people are being shifted from low-lying coastal areas in Gujarat while 54 teams of the NDRF and SDRF remained deployed on Sunday in view of the India Meteorological Department's (IMD) warning that the very severe cyclonic storm Tauktae will reach the state coast on Monday evening and cross it on early Tuesday morning.
Babu R was trapped in a mountain gorge without food or water for two days till the Indian Army rescued him in a daring mission.
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.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah spoke to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray through video conference and took stock of the state's preparedness to tackle any eventuality, the latter's office said. 10 units of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) have been deployed in vulnerable districts, while six others have been kept on a stand-by, officials said.
The body of the trapped miner was spotted on January 16 and efforts were on to pull it out of the shaft of the coal mine filled with water.
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.
