Follow us on G+

Friday 13 June 2014

Beas River Tragedy: Death toll 8, 17 Still Missing

Two more bodies of engineering students from Hyderabad were retrieved on Thursday from the Beas river in Mandi, Himachal Pradesh as the search operations gained momentum with the joining of the Indian Navy divers. With this, the total death toll raised to 8. The victims were identified as T Upendra and Gomoor Arvind Kumar by their parents.The bodies were trapped in rocks and rescue teams had a tough time in retrieving them, said rescue officials. With this, the number of bodies recovered during the last four days has risen to eight, while the fate of sixteen students and a co-tour leader is still unknown.

The bodies of five boys and three girls have been recovered so far and 13 boys and three girls are missing. Meanwhile, 15 divers of the Navy joined the rescue team and an unmanned aerial vehicle has also been deployed to accelerate the search operations. With the melting of snow in higher hills, the discharge of water in the river has increased and over 550 rescue workers from various agencies under the supervision of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) are already engaged in the massive search operations.

National Disaster Management Authority vice chairman M Shashidhar Reddy, who visited the spot on Thursday, said, "Our divers are facing the problem of poor visibility, the river bed is full of silt and huge boulders and rock are acting as impediments and it is only through 'feel' that the bodies are being recognised. The underwater camera did not make much success (due to muddy water) and now we are going to deploy a UAE (unmanned aerial vehicle) that will continuously recce the entire area of operation."

0 comments:

Post a Comment