Eight shipping containers that withstood the force of a snow avalanche in the Himalayas ended up saving the lives of dozens of construction workers who were pulled out alive in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, officials said.
Eight workers died in the avalanche, while rescuers managed to save the remaining 46 Border Roads Organisation (BRO) workers, the Indian Army said. The avalanche struck Mana village in Chamoli district near the China border last week, burying the shipping containers the BRO workers were using as living quarters.
According to rescuers, the workers were found alive due to the eight steel containers being able to withstand the wrecking avalanche, despite being swallowed by the snow.
"These metal shelters saved most of them. They had just enough oxygen to hold on until we got them out," a senior rescue official told The Times of India.
Rescue workers managed to pull out 50 of the trapped workers but four of them died later, the army said in a statement on Saturday.
The next day, the rescuers found the bodies of the remaining workers.
"All 54 persons have now been rescued or recovered. This marks the culmination of the Mana village rescue operation," an army spokesperson said.
Jagbir Singh, a BRO officer from Amritsar, said he was sleeping in his container when the snowslide sent them tumbling several hundred metres down.
"The container we were in went rolling down. By the time we could figure out what had happened, I found a colleague had died and one of my legs was fractured. I also had an injury in the head. There were heaps of snow everywhere," he told The New Indian Express.
Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami announced the conclusion of the operation. "It was a challenging task, but thanks to everyone, it has been a success," he said.
Forty-four of the survivors were admitted to a military hospital in Joshimath, and were reported to be stable, and the other two were airlifted to the city of Rishikesh.
The survivors were taken from Mana to the pilgrim town of Joshimath, around 50 km away, by civil helicopters hired by the army, state broadcaster Doordarshan reported.
Many of the workers were migrant labourers engaged in widening a highway stretch from Mana, the last village on the Indian side, to the Mana Pass bordering Tibet.
The difficult weather forced authorities to bring in a drone-based "intelligent buried object detection system" from New Delhi to assist the search and rescue operation.
More than 200 personnel from various disaster management agencies, the local health department and the district administration were pressed into the rescue operation, as well as helicopters, sniffer dogs and thermal imaging technology.
Lalit Kumar Pandit, 28, a mechanic, said he was awakened by a huge jolt. Mr Pandit told News9 that he ran for his loader machine to carve a path in the snow but failed.
The mechanic, along with 22 other people, had to push forward for two hours through "snow and howling wind" until they reached the worker camp, located around 4km away.
The part of the Himalayas hit by the avalanche is ecologically sensitive and prone to avalanches and landslides. Experts have warned that major construction projects such as hydroelectric dams and new highways are increasing the risk of such calamities in the area.
In 2022, at least 27 mountaineers were killed in an avalanche in northern Uttarakhand and a deadly rock and ice avalanche the previous year had severely damaged two hydropower plants and left over 200 people dead.
Geologists say global warming is making the area’s frozen soil more unstable, leading to more landslides and avalanches.
