CHANDIGARH: After six more bodies were recovered on Saturday, the total toll in the Nugalsari landslide in the Kinnaur district of Himachal Pradesh touched 23.
“Six bodies have been retrieved from the rubble at Chaura village on National Highway 5 in Nichar tehsil. The search and rescue operation for the rest of the nine missing persons is going on. An SUV is feared buried under the rubble, and till now, it has not been traced. It might have rolled down with the debris,” Himachal Pradesh State Disaster Management Director Sudesh Kumar Mokhta said.
Family members and relatives of the people who are still missing continued to camp at the site of the landslide on Saturday.
Meanwhile, rescue operations continued to be affected by the falling rocks.
On Friday, two passengers of an HRTC bus were injured when the shooting stones fell on the bus near the areas where the landslide struck.
It has now been decided that a team of engineers will survey the hilltop and suggest remedies to stop the rock-fall.
Nichar Sub-Divisional Magistrate Manmohan Singh has issued orders to restrict the movement of all types of vehicles from 9 pm to 9 am along the stretch where the landslide occurred.
In another incident on Friday, two workers were killed when the shuttering of an under-construction bridge on the Kiratpur-Ner Chowk highway collapsed in Bilaspur.
HIGHWAYS BUILT IN RISK-PRONE AREAS
As per a 2015 report, eight national highways pass through HP with a total length of 1628.377 km out of which 993 sq km falls in ‘high vulnerable’ zone, 516 sq km in ‘moderate risk’ zone and 11 sq km in ‘extreme vulnerable’ zone.
Of state high-ways, 1,111.5 km falls in high vulnerable zone. Of the total 118 hydropower stations, 67 are in landslide risk area, including 10 mega stations in medium- and high-risk landslide areas.