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Cut-off quake villages reached
Source: Agencies |
September 23, 2011, Friday
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Rescuers yesterday finally reached some of the villages in India's remote northeast that were cut off by a powerful earthquake in the Himalayan region last weekend, as the death toll in the disaster climbed past 100.
Rescue efforts following Sunday's magnitude-6.9 quake, which also struck parts of Tibet and Nepal, were slow-going because heavy rains kept helicopters grounded and mudslides triggered by the disaster blocked roads leading into remote, mountainous terrain.
As the weather improved yesterday, helicopters were able to ferry relief workers to some inaccessible areas for the first time, said R. Sahu, an Indian air force spokesman. Other workers moved forward on the ground, using heavy machinery and dynamite to clear roads.
Sahu said nine villages with a combined population of nearly 1,000 were still cut off, but that aircraft had been able to drop rice and other supplies to stranded residents.
India's Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram yesterday visited some of the hardest-hit areas and said the army assured him that by today at the latest they would be able to access the nine villages by road.
Police said five bodies were found in the Mangan area close to the epicenter.
Nearly 200 homes were damaged in Chungthang, which has a population of nearly 2,000 people. Fearing aftershocks, most residents have been spending the nights in a Sikh shrine that also provides them with food.
The 104 confirmed deaths from the quake were spread across a wide swathe of the sparsely populated Himalayan region, with officials reporting 73 dead in the worst-hit state of Sikkim, 12 in West Bengal, six in Bihar, six in the neighboring Nepal and another seven in the Chinese region of Tibet.
Word on casualties from the cut-off villages has been slow to come by, and the toll was expected to rise.
Rescue efforts following Sunday's magnitude-6.9 quake, which also struck parts of Tibet and Nepal, were slow-going because heavy rains kept helicopters grounded and mudslides triggered by the disaster blocked roads leading into remote, mountainous terrain.
As the weather improved yesterday, helicopters were able to ferry relief workers to some inaccessible areas for the first time, said R. Sahu, an Indian air force spokesman. Other workers moved forward on the ground, using heavy machinery and dynamite to clear roads.
Sahu said nine villages with a combined population of nearly 1,000 were still cut off, but that aircraft had been able to drop rice and other supplies to stranded residents.
India's Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram yesterday visited some of the hardest-hit areas and said the army assured him that by today at the latest they would be able to access the nine villages by road.
Police said five bodies were found in the Mangan area close to the epicenter.
Nearly 200 homes were damaged in Chungthang, which has a population of nearly 2,000 people. Fearing aftershocks, most residents have been spending the nights in a Sikh shrine that also provides them with food.
The 104 confirmed deaths from the quake were spread across a wide swathe of the sparsely populated Himalayan region, with officials reporting 73 dead in the worst-hit state of Sikkim, 12 in West Bengal, six in Bihar, six in the neighboring Nepal and another seven in the Chinese region of Tibet.
Word on casualties from the cut-off villages has been slow to come by, and the toll was expected to rise.
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