Four workers were killed, and four remain missing after an avalanche hit a temporary workers’ camp at a Border Roads Organisation (BRO) highway construction site 500m beyond Mana near the India-China border, officials said on Saturday evening.
The bodies were retrieved in an overnight operation led by the Army and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), but deep snow and harsh weather conditions have made rescue efforts difficult. Of the 55 workers present at the site, 47 were rescued by Saturday afternoon, around 36 hours after the avalanche struck around 5am on Friday.
Mohindra Pal and Jitendra Singh from Himachal Pradesh, Manjeet Yadav from Uttar Pradesh, and Alok Yadav from Uttarakhand died in the avalanche, officials said.
Of the 55 workers, 14 are from Bihar, 11 each from Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, seven from Himachal Pradesh, one each from J&K and Punjab, and 10 from Nepal.
The four workers still missing are Harmesh Chand from Himachal, Ashok from UP, and Anil Kumar and Arvind Kumar Singh from Uttarakhand.
Of these, 29 were airlifted from Mana and Badrinath to Jyotirmath, where they are receiving treatment at an Army hospital, the State Emergency Operation Centre said. One man escaped on his own and reached is home in Himachal on Saturday evening, sources said.
CM Pushkar Singh Dhami said, “Rescue teams have brought out workers from five containers, but three containers remain untraceable due to heavy snow. The Army and ITBP are making intensive efforts to locate the containers where the missing workers are believed to be trapped.”
A dog squad from NDRF was airlifted to assist in the search, and a ground penetration radar is being transported from Delhi to help detect buried containers. Nearly 200 personnel from multiple agencies — including the Army, ITBP, BRO, NDRF, SDRF, district administration, police, health department, and fire services — are involved in the operation.
Vinod Kumar Suman, secretary of the disaster management department, said an Army helipad near the Mana base camp has been made operational, while efforts are underway to remove “6-7 feet of snow from the Badrinath helipad”. The IAF’s Mi-17 helicopter, three Cheetah choppers, two state govt helicopters, and an ambulance helicopter from AIIMS Rishikesh were deployed on Saturday morning, but “helicopter operations were halted at 3pm due to snowfall in Mana”, a senior official said. With the risk of further avalanches increasing due to continuous snowfall, Dhami directed officials to relocate workers from highrisk areas to safer locations.