At least 14 people have been killed and more than 150 people missing after a flash flood swept through a Himalayan mountain valley in northern India, hitting hydropower projects and sweeping workers off the site.
The flood was caused when a glacier near the Rishi Ganga River, one of the tributaries of the Ganges, broke and crumbled into the river on Sunday morning. Local television footage showed a huge rise in brown water creeping into the valley, flooding the banks, causing avalanches and toppling buildings.
The water ran into a small hydro project, which washed away a dam and damaged a larger hydroelectric project being built downstream. About 154 people working on the two projects at the time were still missing on Sunday night, according to Mukesh Kumar, a data importer at the Chamoli district’s disaster management authority in the state of Uttarakhand, where the incident took place.
“The 14 bodies of the workers were retrieved from the river,” he said. Kumar said. “We will only know the identity of the dead and missing workers tomorrow.”
Police are helping with the rescue effort after a small hydroelectric dam was flooded on February 7 in the village of Chormi in the state of Uttarakhand.
Photo:
Reuters
Indian disaster officials, police and teams assisted until late at night with the rescue of workers trapped in a tunnel at one of the sites. Navy divers are being flown Sunday while the Indian Air Force was ready to help with rescues, the government said.
“All our attention is currently on the rescue,” Trivendra Singh Rawat, the prime minister of the states, said in a newsletter.
Hundreds of people died in the same condition after a similar flood in 2013 when the wall of an iceberg broke after heavy rain – through a valley filled with thousands of pilgrims who visited one of the holiest temples of Hinduism.
More than 4,000 people are thought to have gone missing after the crash, although the official death toll has been kept at several hundred, government officials said at the time.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he had spoken to senior officials and was aware of rescue work and emergency relief operations. He announced a government fund to support the families of those killed and injured in the disaster.
“India stands with Uttarakhand and the nation prays for everyone’s safety there,” he said on Twitter.
—Rajesh Roy contributed to this article.
Write to Krishna Pokharel by [email protected]
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