Karnataka and Kerala have joined hands to try and trace three people, one of them a truck driver from Kerala, missing since a massive landslide in Uttara Kannada district on Tuesday morning.
On the fifth day after the landslide near Shirur village swept away an eatery, two LPG tankers and a Bharat Benz lorry along with a stretch of the four-lane NH66, over 50 rescuers were racing against time while hoping the trio were still alive.
The rescuers are particularly hopeful about Arjun, the Bharat Benz driver from Kozhikode in Kerala, since he was inside the driver’s cabin when the landslide struck and may thus have survived. Arjun’s family says his mobile phone kept ringing till 8am on Friday but he didn’t answer calls.
The two other missing victims are local villagers, identified as Naik and Sanne Gowda.
Ten people were caught in the landslide, and seven bodies have been found. The bodies of the couple who ran the eatery and their two children have been recovered along with those of the two tanker drivers, who were in the eatery when the mound of earth and stone came crashing. The identity of the seventh dead victim is unclear.
Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah has instructed the additional director-general of police (law and order), R. Hitendra, to oversee the relief and rescue operation. His Kerala counterpart Pinarayi Vijayan has deputed chief secretary V. Venu to coordinate the effort to rescue Arjun and the other two missing victims.
A part of a hillock had slid down from a height of about 500ft, despatching a strip of the highway into the River Gangavalli that flows alongside the road. Most of the bodies were recovered from the river or the pile of mud deposited along the banks, while a fully loaded LPG tanker was found 6km down the river on Thursday.
A National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team helped empty the tanker by Friday evening after evacuating the entire neighbourhood.
Vijayan on Friday wrote to Siddaramaiah seeking the deployment of a ground penetration radar, available at NIT Surathkal, Uttara Kannada, to look for the missing trio under the debris.
From Saturday morning, a team of experts from the NIT began mapping the Gangavalli and its banks while NDRF and SDRF personnel dug through the mud with the help of several earth movers.
Uttara Kannada deputy commissioner Lakshmi Priya and superintendent of police Narayana M were among district officials present at the disaster site for the fifth consecutive day.
“Rescue work is still going on, with 50 to 60 rescuers risking their lives since the area is still vulnerable to landslides,” Priya told reporters.
‘Faulty road’
State revenue minister Krishna Byre Gowda blamed the National Highways Authority of India for the landslide, saying it had built NH66 to a “faulty design”.
“Normally, hillocks are cut in a 45-degree angle. But the NHAI carved out this road by cutting the hill almost straight. A portion collapsed because of continuous rain,” Gowda said.
Karwar MLA Satish Sail of the Congress said he had warned about an impending disaster because of the road’s flawed design.
“I had said this when the road was under construction. Now we can only pray to God to help us find all of them (the missing people) alive,” he told reporters at the site.