Lesson in rescue but none to learn

- Forces' clockwork versus govt chaos

NISHIT DHOLABHAI

A soldier carries a boy as he assists a woman during rescue operations at Govindghat in Uttarakhand on Sunday. (Reuters)

Jungle Chatti, June 23: A body lying 50ft downhill from where the chopper landed at the makeshift helipad this afternoon was the first signal of what lay in wait.

As the last of the 417 pilgrims were lifted from Jungle Chatti, 2.5km from Gaurikund on the track to Kedarnath, soldiers and rescuers picked their way through human faeces and bodies.

The famished pilgrims were escorted delicately along the foot track by rescuers from the parachute regiment and the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF).

Despite the stench, the squalor and the rain all around, at work was an almost seamless organisation. The evacuation in Jungle Chatti was a lesson in co-ordination for the government that is yet to find its feet. A minister today said the death toll in the state might cross 5,000. ( )

This correspondent — who was flown by the Indian Air Force, first in an Mi-17 from Jolly Grant to Guptkashi and then on a Dhruv from Gaurikund to Jungle Chatti — witnessed at first hand the synchronised manner in which the soldiers worked despite the weather.

The elderly and the weak were taken on shoulder back and assisted downhill to the helipad where a chopper waited even as another hovered above. The NDRF and the paratroopers took the men, women and children to the helipad.

The IAF flew them on the Dhruvs on three-minute sorties to Guptkashi where they were put on the larger Mi-17 to be flown to Jolly Grant, an hour away.

As soon as one chopper took off, the other that was hovering landed and the cycle kept repeating till all were safely evacuated.

It was perfectly co-ordinated — so much in marked contrast to what is happening between Delhi and Dehradun where the co-ordinating officer with a minister of state rank failed to turn up. Instead, he chose to operate from the national capital.

V.K. Duggal, a former Union home secretary and current National Disaster Management Authority honcho, had actually come with Union home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde to Dehradun yesterday. Earlier on Friday, Shinde had appointed Duggal the nodal officer and said he would work out of Dehradun the next day.

But the officer returned to Delhi with Shinde, preferring to remote-control the rescue and salvage operation till the environment in Dehradun became favourable enough for him.

A state minister who came visiting Jungle Chatti, Guptkashi and Gaurikund on a chopper could not wait to leave. Just as well for the rescuers that there was not the distraction of a VIP visit.

The Gaurikund-Kedarnath track is used by pilgrims to reach the temple in the Kedar valley at about 11,500 feet. It is not motorable.

Pilgrims either walk both ways or return on mule-back. Jungle Chatti is nearer Gaurikund than Kedarnath. A kilometre from here a signboard dangles from a post at Morpani in a narrow gully. It reads: "Kasht ke liye khed hai (we regret the trouble)."

Beating the odds of the weather, the IAF and the army today flew continuous sorties here, touching down on a helipad built in a day.

The weather forecast for tomorrow is worse. The rescuers lost about three hours to the weather this morning. Along with the Mi-17s and the Dhruvs, the army also flew the smaller Cheetah helicopters like the way they do in the harsher climes of the Siachen Glacier to maintain posts through deep winters.

The thing about the IAF's "Op Rahat" and the army's "Op Surya Hope" — two different names for the relief operation — is that it has established seamless co-ordination between the two forces and with the NDRF.

But at the macro-level, there is a gap that has barely been addressed.

The Centre has left crucial decisions — such as how to handle the last rites of the dead — to the state government.

The Uttarakhand government, on its part, has signalled it has neither the means to rescue or treat people nor the resolve to decide its policy in the aftermath of the flash floods and cloudbursts.

What remain on the Gaurikund-Kedarnath track at Jungle Chatti are a few destroyed shops and tea stalls. An additional district magistrate, K.S. Rawat, who touched down here for five minutes, wanted to fly back immediately.

One of those rescued today, Ram Dhan of Ayodhya who was travelling with his wife, said just before boarding a chopper that "we needed help the most between the 16th and the 19th. There was none. No one came. The phones were not working. We have not eaten for four days."

At Morpani, where the signboard regretted the trouble, there is also the debris of a private helicopter that crashed on a rescue mission two days ago. It has a broken tail rotor and rotor blades.

The debris sits among torn clothes, footwear and woollen caps that have mixed with wet mud and human faeces.

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