Dehradun: Rescuers pulled out 14 more labourers from the snow that engulfed a BRO camp in the high-altitude Mana village in Uttarakhand's Chamoli district as search operations resumed at the site of the avalanche on Saturday, officials said. Eight workers remain trapped.
With the evacuation of the 14 labourers, 47 of the 55 labourers who were trapped under the avalanche, which hit the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) camp between Mana and Badrinath early on Friday morning, have been rescued. Thirty-three had been rescued by Friday night.
Uttarakhand | 14 civilians have been rescued and evacuted from avalanche site by Indian Army this morning. Search and rescue operations continuing for more than 24 hours. With slight respite in the weather, three injured personnel evacuated from Mana to Joshimath for critical… pic.twitter.com/46gJQYxq8B
— ANI (@ANI) March 1, 2025
#WATCH | Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami meets the injured BRO workers who have been rescued from the Mana Avalanche site and are being brought to Joshimath for treatment at the Army Hospital pic.twitter.com/vDM6wjbTxH
— ANI (@ANI) March 1, 2025
Rain and snowfall hampered the rescue efforts on Friday and the operation was suspended as the night fell.
As the weather cleared up on Saturday, choppers joined the operation.
District Disaster Management Officer N K Joshi said Army and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) personnel based in Mana resumed the rescue operation in the morning.
According to the officials, the rescue teams pulled out 14 more labourers from the snow while a search is on for the remaining eight who have been trapped for more than 24 hours now.
Three of the labourers who were rescued on Friday in critical condition and were undergoing treatment at the ITBP hospital in Mana were airlifted to the Jyotirmath Army Hospital, Chamoli District Magistrate Sandeep Tiwari said.
"We hope the clear weather will speed up the rescue operation," he said.
Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami is also likely to visit the avalanche site.
According to a list released by the Uttarakhand State Disaster Management Authority, the trapped labourers are from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, and Jammu and Kashmir, among other states. The list has 10 labourers' names, without mentioning the states they belong to.
Disaster Management Secretary Vinod Kumar Suman said on Friday that more than 65 personnel are engaged in the rescue operation.
Located three kilometres from Badrinath, Mana is the last village on the India-Tibet border at a height of 3,200 metres.
(Except for the headline, this article has not been edited by FPJ's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)