No more survivors have been found and defence and paramilitary personnel are now wrapping up their mission. Rain and fog delayed rescue operations on Tuesday in Uttarakhand where the death toll in the calamity rose to 807 with 127 more bodies recovered from Kedarnath even as security forces began the process of cremating corpses in the shrine premises. Fresh incidents of landslips were also reported from Tehri district in which a woman and a child were killed. Foggy and overcast conditions in Dehradun delayed take off by choppers at Sahasradhara helipad and Jolly Grant Airport but air rescue operations to evacuate around 9000 people have now resumed with improvement in the weather. Official sources that 127 more bodies were recovered since yesterday from Kedarnath area, taking the death toll to 807. Search and rescue operations in Kedarnath and surrounding areas are over for all practical purposes, officials said in Son Prayag on Tuesday. No more survivors have been found and defence and paramilitary personnel are now wrapping up their mission. “No survivors remain in the jungles around Kedarnath. They have all been brought out,” Ravinath Raman, nodal officer of rescue operations in Rudraprayag district, said in Guptkashi on Monday. Meanwhile, truck loads of dry Deodar wood and ghee have been despatched to Kedarnath and the effort is to begin the process of mass ritual cremation of bodies strewn over the premises after their identification, post mortem and DNA preservation formalities, sources at the state police headquarters here told PTI. The bodies already beginning to putrefy, giving rise to fears of an epidemic outbreak in affected areas. “The bodies cannot be removed. They are far too decomposed for that. We will have to cremate them where they are found,” Mr. Raman had told reporters on Monday. “But the rain will make that difficult. The forecast is for heavy weather in the coming few days,” he said. The toll, he said was 1,000 as of Monday, on the basis of bodies found. The rest are being taken as missing In Son Prayag, 25 km from Guptakashi, there were only a handful of NDRF personnel present on Tuesday morning. The rest had all returned to Guptkashi by Monday evening. “Our teams were also in Rambada, Gaurikund and Kedarnath, but they would have returned by nightfall,” said an NDRF official. “Army and paramilitary personnel have minutely combed the jungles in this area. There are no more people trapped here. The survivors have all been moved,” he added. Bandrinath rescue With rain hampering rescue operations from Badrinath where the majority of pilgrims remain stranded, Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna has appealed to their relatives not to run out of patience saying they are safe with enough supplies of food and and medicines made available to them. Assuring them that their kin stranded in Badrinath will be evacuated safely at the earliest, he asked them not to worry. There are about five community kitchens being run at the shrine under the supervision of the district administration, he said. Son Prayag is a landscape of rock and boulders now, with only a strip of water flowing through. The entire river bed at the confluence of the Son and Mandakini, where once houses, hotels and shops stood, is now a rocky expanse. Rescue operations had been intensified in view of warnings of rain in the area from Monday onwards. Although there was a heavy shower on Tuesday morning, causing another road block on the route to Son Prayag, it was hurriedly cleared to allow operations to continue in full swing. The haste was evident. The coordination committee being run in Guptkashi by locals kept pleading with returning pilgrims as well as the kin of missing persons to move on quickly. The rains will make matters difficult, they announced over loudspeakers. Another NDRF official said work that remains is for the bodies to be sprayed with disinfectants. As for the missing persons, he said there was little hope. “It is now more than a week since the cloudburst. Chances of survival are very low for those who have not been brought out by rescue personnel or given shelter by locals. Without food and water, it would be very tough. “Also, even a single night in these jungles without any warm clothing and shelter can prove fatal. Remember many of them are aged; some would have already taken ill after the cloudburst. In such circumstances, holding on becomes difficult,” he said. Many would have perished in the first moments of the cloudburst which, he explained, was like an entire column of water descending from the skies with great force and crashing into the mountains.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 08:23:45 +0000