The 28-member tourist group that was on a tour to Kerala has gone missing after the ravaging cloudburst and resultant flash floods hit Uttarkashi in Uttarakhand. Striking on Tuesday morning, the disaster caused huge landslides and washed away houses, hotels and homestays that dotted the pilgrimage route towards Gangotri. The tourists who went missing were headed to Gangotri in Uttarkashi on Wednesday morning when the tragedy happened.
Relatives said the group left at about 8.30 am and was headed to Gangotri. Among the 28 people who went missing, 20 of them are reportedly Malayalis who settled in Maharashtra, and the rest are from other districts of Kerala. One of the relatives told that she had talked to a couple of the group the previous day; they had happened to tell her that they were leaving Gangotri. Further contacts with them have proved futile since they are on the same continent.
The family members also stated that the tour of the group had been booked through a travel agency based in Haridwar, which cannot now even give information about their status. Families are hard-pressed to find a little bit of information about their loved ones as communication networks have been disabled in the stricken area, and phone batteries are probably depleted.
This has been confirmed by the authorities that search and rescue operations are in place, especially in the Dharali area, which is one of the worst hit. The Indian Air Force has already activated planes such as An-32, C-295-type transport planes to share in relief operations in Dehradun and its environs. In the meantime, the local rescue services, disaster relief agencies, and volunteer labourers work tirelessly to find the people who are missing in hard-to-access terrain and volumes of debris.
The tragedy has also elicited issues of the safety of the pilgrims and tourists along the popular routes of Uttarakhand state during the monsoon season, when cloudbursts and flash floods are prone to occur.
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