RUDRAPRAYAG, India (AP) – Rescuers in northern India were working on Monday to rescue more than three dozen power plant workers trapped in a tunnel after part of a Himalayan glacier broke and sent a wall of water and debris descending the mountain in a disaster that left 18 dead and 165 missing.
More than 2,000 soldiers, paramilitary groups and police participate in search and rescue operations in the state of Uttarakhand, after Sunday’s flood, which destroyed one dam, damaged another and took houses downstream.
Officials said the focus was on saving 37 workers trapped inside a tunnel at one of the affected hydroelectric plants. Excavators were brought in to help with efforts to reach workers, who have been out of contact since the flood.
“The tunnel is full of rubble, which came from the river. We are using machines to clear the way, ”said H. Gurung, a senior paramilitary police officer on the Indo-Tibetan border.
Authorities fear that many more will die and are looking for bodies downstream using boats. They also walked along the banks of the river and used binoculars to search for bodies that may have been taken downstream.
The flood was caused when a part of the Nanda Devi glacier broke on Sunday morning, releasing water trapped behind it, a disaster that experts said could be related to global warming. The floodwater descended the mountain and entered other water courses, forcing the evacuation of many villages along the banks of the Alaknanda and Dhauliganga rivers.
Video from the state of Uttarakhand, in northern India, showed muddy and concrete ash floods falling through a valley and turning into a dam, breaking it into pieces with little resistance before roaring downstream. The flooding turned the field into what appeared to be a lunar landscape of gray.
A hydroelectric plant in Alaknanda was destroyed and a plant under construction in Dhauliganga was damaged, said Vivek Pandey, a spokesman for the Indo-Tibetan Border Police. Flowing from the Himalayan mountains, the two rivers meet before merging with the Ganges.
The arrested workers were at the Dhauliganga factory, where on Sunday 12 workers were rescued from a separate tunnel.
A senior government official told the Associated Press that they do not know the total number of people who were working on the Dhauliganga project. “The number of missing persons may increase or decrease,” said SA Murugesan.
Pandey said on Monday that 165 workers in the two factories, not including the prisoners in the tunnel, are missing and at least 18 bodies have been recovered.
Those rescued on Sunday were taken to a hospital, where they were recovering.
One of the rescued workers, Rakesh Bhatt, told the Associated Press that they were working in the tunnel when the water ran.
“We think it could be rain and that the water will go down. But when we saw mud and debris entering with great speed, we realized that something big had happened, ”he said.
Bhatt said one of the workers managed to contact the authorities using his cell phone.
“We waited almost six hours – praying to God and playing with each other to keep our spirits high. I was the first to be rescued and it was a great relief, ”he said.
The Himalayan area, where the Sunday flood occurred, has a chain of hydroelectric projects on several rivers and their tributaries. Authorities said they were able to save other power units downstream due to the timely action taken to release water by opening gates.
Floods have also damaged homes, but details of the number and whether any residents were injured, missing or killed have yet to be clarified. Authorities said they were trying to track down whether anyone was missing in the villages along the two rivers.
Government officials have launched packages of food and medicine for at least two villages affected by the flood.
Many people in neighboring villages work at the Dhauliganga factory, said Murugesan, but since it was Sunday, fewer people were working than on a weekday,
“The only consolation for us is that the number of victims in neighboring villages is much less,” he said.
Some have already begun to point to climate change as a contributing factor due to the well-known melting and breaking of the world’s glaciers, although other factors such as erosion, earthquakes, increased water pressure and volcanic eruptions have also caused the glaciers to collapse.
Anjal Prakash, research director and adjunct professor at the Indian School of Business who contributed to UN-sponsored research on global warming, said that while data on the cause of the disaster was not yet available, “this looks a lot like a change climatic event as glaciers are melting due to global warming. “
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Banerjee reported from Lucknow, India.