RESCUERS HELPED by air force helicopters, army personnel and sniffer dogs yesterday reached remote homes in the country’s northeast Himalayan region which were cut off by last Sunday’s powerful earthquake that killed about 104 people.
Word on casualties and damage from remote villages in Sikkim province that borders Tibet and Nepal – also rocked by the 6.9 magnitude quake – has been slow to trickle in and the toll is expected to rise, officials said.
Army sappers blasted their way through collapsed mountain sides, battling heavy rains and mudslides. As the rains eased yesterday, though, military helicopters were able to ferry relief workers to inaccessible areas for the first time and airdrop food and water to stranded residents, said air force spokesman R Sahu.
Other rescuers moved forward on the ground, using heavy machinery and dynamite to clear roads in the country’s least populous and poorly developed province.
Mr Sahu said at least nine villages with a combined population of about 1,000, remained marooned after the earthquake.
India’s home minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, who visited the region yesterday, said these would be accessed by the army within the next 24 hours.
Of the 104 confirmed deaths from the quake in the sparsely populated Himalayan region, 73 were in Sikkim, 18 in neighbouring Bengal and Bihar provinces, six in adjoining Nepal and another seven in the Chinese region of Tibet.
A company building a huge hydroelectric plant along the glacier-fed Teesta river in northern Sikkim said 18 of its employees had been killed after their homes and surrounding mountain roads collapsed in on them.
The Indian military meanwhile evacuated 70 stranded foreign tourists visiting Sikkim’s 200-plus Buddhist monasteries. Annually they attract more than 20,000 overseas visitors.
Sikkim’s chief minister, Pawan Kumar Chamling said initial estimates indicate losses and damage worth Rs 1 trillion (€16 billion).