Army personnel averted a major tragedy in Turtuk area of Nubra valley close to the Line of Control (LoC) by evacuating school children trapped in a major landslide. The incident occurred on May 27 when the entire Ladakh region with Kashmir valley was experiencing heavy rains and snowfall in upper reaches.
Giving the details, a defence spokesperson here said that a school bus with 15 children on board while on way to the Army Goodwill School at Tyakshi was trapped in a landslide at about 9.45 am. “The prompt response and rescue operation by the Army personnel to extricate the children from the landslide area averted a major catastrophe,” he said.
Eleven children were, however, seriously injured in the mishap. “The Army jawans, with complete disregard to personal safety, extricated the children from the school bus trapped in the landslide. The Army medical team, meanwhile, rushed to the site despite continuing landslides, and provided immediate first aid and treatment to the injured children.”
The operation was supervised by senior Army officers who reached the incident site within minutes of the incident, the spokesperson said adding that three Army helicopters were also pressed into service despite bad weather conditions to evacuate the eight seriously injured children to Military Hospital at Hunder. The Army doctors stablilsed and evacuated three of these children with critical head injuries by helicopter to Leh since no CT scan facilities for further diagnosis are available at Hunder. An Army surgeon performed a life-saving emergent surgery on Faizullah, a 6-year-old student. He had sustained serious open head injury with depressed skull fracture and was in no condition to be air evacuated. The second emergent surgery was performed on Shamim, 10, as he had blunt trauma chest causing haemopneumothorax.