National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) forces resumed search and rescue operations on Friday morning at Irshalwadi hamlet in Maharashtra's Raigad district, where a massive landslide buried several houses and claimed the lives of at least 16 people so far.
Even as four NDRF teams got to work with assistance from Raigad police and local authorities, incessant rain and the difficult hilly terrain have posed several challenges to the rescue operations. Due to the uneven terrain, earth movers and other machinery cannot be easily moved and rescue operations are being carried out manually. “From the hill base, it takes around one-and-a-half hours to reach Irshalwadi, which does not have a pucca road. As the village does not have a pucca road, excavators could not be easily moved,” an NDRF official told PTI.
Mountaineers from nearby towns were the first to reach the settlement kick-start rescue efforts. A dog squad has also been roped in to assist in the operations.
Of the total 228 residents of the village, the bodies of 16 have been recovered, while 93 residents have been traced, NDRF officials said. However, a total of 119 villagers are yet to be traced. Of the nearly 50 houses in the hill-top village, 17 were flattened by the landslide that hit on Wednesday night. They include those who had gone out of the village to attend a marriage or for rice plantation work. Almost all the residents of the Irshalwadi village are Thakars, a local tribe. The Thakars cultivate paddy in the fields near their homes and live off the forest.
NDRF personnel had to stop their search and rescue operation at the landslide site on Thursday evening due to heavy rainfall and threat of a fresh landslide. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Thursday issued a red alert for heavy to very heavy rainfall in the districts of Thane, Raigad, Pune, and Palghar for Friday and Saturday.
