[1]It is now over a month since rescue and evacuation efforts began following the September 18 earthquake in north Sikkim. Relief and reconstruction work by the Indian Army, Indian Air Force (IAF), Border Roads Organisation (BRO), Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), in tandem with the local administration, continues unabated despite many adversities of weather and inhospitable terrain conditions.
The scale of rescue and relief operation is so far unseen in Sikkim; the presence of the Indian Army and BRO in the region; the strategic ability of the IAF to mobilise resources and relief from anywhere in the country within a short notice. The swift operation proved a “life-saver” for the quake victims. The people of Sikkim also deserve special kudos for small but useful efforts.
Immediately after the 6.8 magnitude earthquake at about 5.15 pm on September 18, the Indian Army swung into action by sending small teams for rescue and humanitarian assistance across Sikkim. Soon after, the Army’s operation, code-named Trishakti Madad, involved nearly 5,500 Army troops and 700 ITBP personnel, totalling 105 Army columns of varying sizes.
They were engaged in the rescue, restoration and reconstruction efforts in the quake aftermath, which resulted in 25 road blockages and five major landslides on the NH-31A, between Siliguri and Gangtok. With the hypocentre reported as 20.7 km, the quake caused massive damage in India, Nepal and Tibet. It was also felt in Bangladesh and some damage was reported from Bhutan. Aftershocks measured 5.7 and 5.3 on the Richter scale and bad weather only delayed the operation.
Detachments of Army combat engineers and Border Roads Organisation (BRO) teams with road-opening equipment were moved from Siliguri and Binaguri to clear the road blocks. There was substantial damage to the Army properties in these areas.
Two fatal casualties to Army persons in north Sikkim was also reported. Few thousand civilians were accommodated in eight Army relief camps in Gangtok, Chungthang, Pegong and Darjeeling and some more in ITBP relief camps. Thirty doctors were heli-dropped at Mangam in north Sikkim as roads were cut-off, leaving people stranded.
By September 19 evening, 21 engineering columns of the Army had restored one-way traffic and telecommunication and power lines partially. Two-way traffic was restored within 24 hours, paving way for easier rescue and communication to areas in north Sikkim.
Director-general, Border Roads Organisation, Lt. Gen. Ravi Shankar told this writer that BRO made National Highway 31A operable in record time by clearing 14 major landslides and 14 minor ones. The Army suffered one fatal casualty and one was injured. “The areas near the epicentre of the earthquake, Mangan, are totally damaged. The roads from Gangtok to Mangan are blocked by massive landslides on at least 14 places,” he said following an aerial survey in the area.
The Army engineering columns and the BRO cleared blockages on NH 31A, which connects Sevoke Road to Gangtok, paving one-way traffic movement. The other road links cleared include the Lebong-Darjeeling axis, North Sikkim Highway (NSH), the Jawaharlal Nehru Marg (JNM) axis used by both tourists and Army personnel to reach Nathu-La, the Himalayan pass, at 14,140 feet.
Heavy rains hampered the rescue operations but affected civilians were accommodated in tents pitched by the Army, with cookhouses set up for providing food to all. The Army’s Medical Corps deployed 34 medical detachments and relief camps at various places in Sikkim, treating nearly 250 out-patients daily. A concerted effort to treat more casualties if need be, is being augmented and complemented by the medical supplies that the Army helicopters have been bringing in every possible sortie. Apart from the necessary advanced life-saving treatment at the Army’s “158 Base Hospital” at Bengdubi, patients were also given psychological counselling at the hospital to overcome post-traumatic stress.
With the Army and the IAF reportedly being forced to divert significant number of helicopters and personnel for visits of various VVIPs, the Army is reported to have conveyed an unusual but important suggestion to the defence ministry that VVIPs should desist from touring earthquake-affected areas. About 36 helicopters of the IAF and the Army ran hundreds of sorties for rescue and relief.
The Army eventually had 214 columns, that included two “special forces” columns who slithered down from hovering helicopters to reach the inaccessible and completely cut-off villages of Sakkyong, Phontong and Be. GOC-in-C, Eastern Command, Lt. Gen. Bikram Singh and Corps Commander Lt. Gen. Vinod Bhatia visited several forward areas and, in meetings with senior formation commanders, took stock of the state of operational functionalities, including damages to the Army’s forward defence lines, which thankfully remained largely unaffected.
Speaking to this writer, Lt. Gen. Singh said, “Our forces deployed on the border continue to man their defences as resolutely and vigilantly as ever in spite of the vagaries of the weather conditions and the tough terrain.”
Army troops covered over 106 villages along the major axis of Mangan, Chungthang, Lachung, Chhaten, Dikchu, Geyzing and Zema, undoubtedly among the worst-affected regions in north Sikkim. A total of 971 tourists, including 12 foreigners, were among those evacuated by air or taken to safer locations by alternate modes.
One of the exceptional and innovative move that saved lives was that of Lt. Col. R.K. Saini’s. Commanding a field workshop of the electrical and mechanical engineers (EME) battalion in the outer perimeter of Gangtok city, his personnel saved the life of a young woman, Sanu Tamang.
She was travelling in a car with her husband and her brother when a combination of earth, stones and an uprooted tree came crashing down on it. Her brother Kamal lay crushed in the car driven by her husband Dhanraj Tamang. Col. P. Kapoor, commanding officer of the EME battalion, managed to get in touch with the BRO and requisitioned additional excavator and bulldozer to the site. He further reinforced fork-lifters and pillar lights to facilitate rescue operations by night.
Showing exemplary courage and presence of mind to arrive at a quick decision, Lt. Col. Saini decided to cut open the vehicle into several parts. Meanwhile, a giant crater was dug on one side of the car to offset any possibility of the vehicle tipping over. By 1.30 am, the team, that worked relentlessly all through the night, had managed to safely bring out the passengers alive.
Saved after a near five-hour death-defying ordeal, Sanu and Dhanraj, married this July, say they can never forget the invaluable and extended assistance of the Army personnel. Sanu suffered deep wounds around her stomach, massive crush injuries in her pelvic region and lower limbs. She needed specialist treatment and was advised to be shifted to a Siliguri hospital. Unable to produce documents of her domicile status, Sanu was ineligible for free treatment. Her husband Dhanraj, who is a driver by profession, had already lost his only means of livelihood, the crushed car which he used as taxi. He then decided to approach the same officers of the EME battalion who had earlier saved their lives, pleading for help. The officers did not disappoint him.
With a little intervention, they persuaded the state authorities handling the medical relief in the quake-affected areas to extend help to the beleaguered couple. But without fuel, which was already in short supply at Gangtok after the earthquake, the hospital ambulance was of little help. Realising the grave danger to Sanu’s life the EME officers refuelled the ambulance from their own reserves, enabling her to be taken to Siliguri and thereafter continued to monitor Sanu’s progress and assisted Dhanraj in every way possible to alleviate their problems.
Road clearance work is still going on along the Toong-Chungthang, Chungthang-Lachung and Chungthang-Lachen axis. Even the robust, 10-inch-thick iron girders laid on some of the stretches on the Toong-Chungthang axis to prevent soil and rock giving away beneath, failed to hold the weight of the fractured rocks, mangling them beyond usefulness.
The BRO’s task, unenviable as evident from the pictures taken recently from the air, remains hugely cut out. “With a little luck” (referring to the clear weather) and “with dedication of a few of my good men, the Chungthang-Lachung road should be open in a week’s time,” said Col. P.H. Reddy, commander 758 BRTF (Border Roads Task Force) at Chungthang, on October 13, 2011.
With road conditions still a far cry from safe for quick and safe transportation of relief materials to Chungthang and beyond, the use of the yet-to-be-commissioned, 18-km-long Teesta stage-III Urja hydro-electric project tunnel, by the Army will go down as perhaps one of the most innovative usage of the Urja project tunnel to tide over the crisis.
The horseshoe-shaped reinforced-concrete tunnel, measuring an average 7.8 metres in diameter, and wide enough for restricted vehicular movement proved to be the life-saver and reportedly suffered no damage in the recent earthquake.
By early October, the death toll reported was 112.
Sikkim’s chief minister Pawan Chamling said the state has suffered an estimated `1 lakh crores of damage in the wake of the unprecedented earthquake. The Sikkim government has disbursed `14.21 crores as relief among quake-hit people in Sikkim.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reportedly sanctioned an ex-gratia of `2 lakhs from the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund to the deceased and `1 lakh for every injured person. Mr Chamling expressed his gratitude to the government of India and the Army for their prompt action in launching rescue and relief operations and restoration of road commutation on National Highway 31A.
Anil Bhat, a retired Army officer, is a defence and security analyst based in New Delhi.
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[1] http://archive.asianage.com/newsp1108jpg-935