Rescue work on to dig up dozens of submerged homes in Pune
Rescuers waded waist-deep through swirling sludge to dig their way into dozens of submerged homes on Thursday and find more than 100 people swallowed up by a landslide that flattened almost an entire village.- Environmentalists say construction of hydro-electric dams, involving blasting tunnels through mountains to carry diverted flows of water, deforestation and the spread of unregulated buildings along river banks magnify the impact of heavy rains.
- Rainy season downpours, though vital for agriculture, can often bring disaster. Unprecedented rain last year wreaked havoc across Uttarakhand, swelling rivers and lakes, inundating towns and killing thousands.
- The village school, one of the only roofed buildings to survive, was pressed into service as a makeshift shelter for rescue workers, while police were stationed in trucks to provide backup.
- Heavy rain raised fears of another landslide.
- Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh meets disaster management officials during a visit to the site of landslide at Malin village in Pune.
- Meenabai Lembe, injured by falling pieces of wood, was pulled to safety by her husband, who had been working in nearby fields. She knew nothing about her two children and her mother-in-law, who were asleep in the house when the landslide struck.
- Emergency teams lined a path along a river, one of several flowing into the area from hills, looking for bodies that might have been washed away. The frame of a motorbike floated by on a torrent of mud, an indication that bodies could be underneath
- Seven teams of 42 workers each fanned out across the vast pool and four earth moving machines scooped out mud spread over an area the size of a soccer pitch.
- The head of rescue operations at the National Disaster Response Force said 125 people were feared trapped. Rain and poor communications hampered the teams working in the village, 60 km from the city of Pune in a remote part of the state.
- Medical staff and residents tried to cremate the dead by a river flowing past the village, but the wood was too damp from incessant rain and did not burn. Not a single survivor has been pulled from the site.
- The confirmed death toll was 35 from Wednesday's landslide on a hill above Malin village in Maharashtra, said H.H. Chauhan, deputy director of health services in the district where the village is located.
Rescuers waded waist-deep through swirling sludge to dig their way into dozens of submerged homes on Thursday and find more than 100 people swallowed up by a landslide that flattened almost an entire village.
Rescue work on to dig up dozens of submerged homes in Pune
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