Mana: As the Army races against time to trace four workers still missing after Friday’s avalanche at Uttarakhand’s Chamoli, finding three containers where the men were staying is the most crucial step, rescuers say. Five containers have been traced, but three are yet to be found due to the six-feet-deep snow.
Almost 60 men working on a Border Roads Organisation (BRO) project were trapped in the avalanche. As of Saturday evening, 51 had been rescued, four had succumbed, and four were missing.Among the survivors was Gopal Joshi, a native of Narayanbagar in Chamoli district, who had been operating an accelerator machine for the last several months at the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) camp.
Employed by Vijay Infra Construction Company, Joshi and his colleagues had been living in five containers set up by the roadside. When he stepped out that morning, he expected a quiet, snow-covered landscape. Instead, he was met with a deafening thunder and the terrifying sight of snow rushing towards them at an incredible speed.
Another worker, Manoj Bhandari, described waking up to the sight of a “mountain of snow” sliding down the peak. “I shouted to alert everyone and ran behind the loader machine parked nearby to save myself,” he said.
Other workers, including three from Mathura, struggled to escape as the thick snow hindered their movements. Jagbir Singh from Amritsar, Punjab, recounted how he and his companions attempted to flee towards Badrinath.
Most of the 19 workers rescued and brought to the Army Hospital suffered injuries to their back, head, hands, and legs. Two of them, who sustained serious wounds, were airlifted to AIIMS, Rishikesh, for advanced treatment. The workers, hailing from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, and Jammu and Kashmir, had been employed by the General Reserve Engineer Force (GREF) under BRO.
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