Bengaluru: State government officials on Monday said that they are getting information about more number of tourists from Karnataka stranded in the quake-hit Nepal and the number could cross 400. The initial estimate by the State Disaster Management Authority (SDMA) was that around 330 people from the state were stranded. The authorities were collating more data, even as over 200 people landed in Bengaluru through different means of transport.
IAS officer Ramandeep Chowdhary, who was sent by the state government to coordinate rescue efforts, reached Varanasi on Monday. He told Deccan Chronicle over the phone that his team is working on assessing the exact number of stranded visitors from the state. “Nepalese authorities told us that around 200 buses left Kathmandu and they will enter India at two points – Varanasi and Gorakhpur. IAS officers from the state who have reached Kathmandu have been able to send around 50 people in IAF planes and they are being accommodated at Karnataka Bhavan,” he said.
SDMA officials said that the people from Karnataka have started landing and most of them will return to Bengaluru and different parts of the state over the next four days. All the 27 passengers from Vijayapura, who were stranded in Nepal, have been safely evacuated and they landed in Bengaluru on Monday evening. “District-in-charge minister of Vijayapura, Dr M.B. Patil, bore their air fares of around Rs 2 lakh,” they said.
The officials said that control rooms in Bengaluru continued to receive calls from relatives of those stranded in the Himalayan nation. “Soon, we will have the list of people who are reaching Bengaluru.”
I shook hands with death, it’s my second life, recalls quake survivor
Saturday’s earthquake will haunt Mr Santosh Nayak, a businessman from J.P. Nagar in Bengaluru, for a long time. “I shook hands with death and I have got a second life. Panic after the temblor was so intense that our family of six scattered and it took us six hours to reunite,” he said .
“We could not even run because of the violent tremors. We ran out of our hotel rooms, but there were hundreds of others on the road running helter-skelter. I could reach my wife and daughter only after one hour of search. We were not sure when the next quake would hit and we all stayed outdoors the entire day,” Mr Nayak said.
Another survivor, Mr Gururaj, who reached Bengaluru on Monday, said, “We are grateful to government authorities who brought us back. We took the road route from Kathmandu to Varanasi where most of the stranded people are reaching.”
