33 rescued, hunt on for 22 as avalanche hits Chamoli

Twenty-two Border Roads Organisation (BRO) labourers working to clear snow near the high-altitude border village of Mana in Uttarakhand's Chamoli district remained trapped under an avalanche till late on Friday even as 33 were pulled out in a frantic rescue operation, officials said.

- Neeraj Santoshi

Rescue teams were battling treacherous terrain, blinding snowfall and freezing temperatures in a desperate race against time to save the trapped workers.

The extreme weather has forced rescuers to proceed without air support, relying instead on ground teams navigating blocked mountain roads, the officials cited above added.

"At about 8am, a massive avalanche hit the camp trapping 55 workers there [two of the workers were on leave]. The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (IRBP) and Indian Army personnel deployed there quickly started the rescue operations amid snowfall and freezing weather conditions," said Sandeep Tiwari, Chamoli's district magistrate.

Nand Kishore Joshi, the district disaster management officer at Chamoli, later said: "33 workers have been rescued till 5pm and efforts are on to rescue the remaining 22 workers".

The workers were camped near Mana village, 6km from Badrinath shrine and 260km from Dehradun, to clear the road of boulders and snow to provide armed forces quick connectivity to the strategic China border. BRO has a 48km road it maintains to the Mana Pass on the China border from Mana village, the last village on the frontier with the neighbouring country.

Visibility was near-zero in the area, with heavy snow hampering access to the remote site located at an elevation of 3,200 metres. Helicopters remained grounded due to the adverse conditions, complicating evacuation efforts for those already rescued, including three in critical condition.