Gangtok, April 18: A 40-year-old man drowned in a tributary of the Teesta in East Sikkim last evening while trying to rescue three persons marooned atop a truck stuck in the river that rose suddenly following heavy rain.
Three men were loading sand on the truck and another was cleaning his Tata Sumo in the Rangpo, when the water level began rising around 5pm.
One person engaged in the sand loading swam to safety, while the remaining three climbed atop the truck. The river swelled further and the Tata Sumo was soon submerged in the water.
Around 6.30pm, despite the heavy shower and fading light, residents of Rangpo, located 44km from here, swung into action to save the three sitting atop the truck. Rangpo police also joined the operation.
The driver of the Tata Sumo was pulled through the fast flowing river by the rescuers who had a degree of protection with ropes tied around their waist. “But the rope around Bhola Tamang loosened and he was swept downstream,” said an officer of Rangpo police station.
Tamang was pulled out of the water by other rescue workers and taken to the nearest hospital at Singtam, 12km away. He was declared dead on arrival by the hospital authorities.
The other two, Dil Bahadur Gurung and Md Salim, hanged on for dear life even as the river rose to the bonnet of the truck.
Around 10pm, army personnel arrived with a raft and the duo were safely brought to the riverbank.
District collector, East, D Anandan told The Telegraph that compensation would be released to the family members of the deceased according to government rules once a report on the incident was submitted to him by the block officer concerned.
The rain that lasted for hours triggered at least a dozen minor mud slides in Gangtok, some along the NH31A. However, no major damage has been reported and the debris has been removed.
“We are on alert as the district has been experiencing heavy rains for the past few days. Quick Response Teams have been formed and a control room has been set up,” said Anandan.
Source: The Telegraph
Daylong search operations along the Teesta today proved futile as none of the missing jawans could be traced.
A Sevoke-bound army truck carrying jawans skidded off NH 31 and fell into the Teesta between Sevoke Coronation Bridge and Mongpong, about 30 km from Siliguri, yesterday morning.
Five bodies were recovered from the river during the rescue operations yesterday. Six injured jawans had also been rescued. Police sources had said there were 18 people in the truck, but army officials today put the figure at 16.
All the army personnel in the truck were from the Sixth Maratha Regiment. The four bodies recovered late in the evening yesterday were identified as those of Sanjoy Nel, Amol Solanki, Baba Saheb Lalwa and Buket Pawar, all constables in the regiment, said Uday Tamang, the officer-in-charge of the Rambhi police outpost.
“We found the bodies about three to four kilometres downstream from the accident site,” said an army official monitoring the search operations.
This morning, an eight-member team of army divers from Jorhat in Assam started the search operations with members of the Teesta Bazaar-based Action Adventure and Rescue Group. Two rafts and a speedboat were pressed into service.
“We tried to retrieve the truck that had drowned, but it would not budge,” said Sukhbir Tamang, a member of the rescue team. “None of the missing men could be traced.”
The missing army personnel have been identified as S. Desai, Mithun, Deepak Nikam, Shailshankar and Ram Bahadur Thapa.
Residents and daily commuters of Bagrakote, Sevoke and Malbazar blamed the bad condition of the roads for the accident.
Source: The Telegraph
Five army men died and seven went missing today after their truck skidded off National Highway 31 between Mongpong and Sevoke Coronation Bridge and fell into the Teesta.
Six injured jawans were rescued from the river, while it took almost seven hours just to locate the truck. It has not yet been hauled out of the river.
The dead include at least one junior commissioned officer, whose identity has been disclosed along with those of the rescued six. However, the army has remained tight-lipped about the names and ranks of the remaining 11.
It was around 8.30am when 18 army men — all from the Sixth Maratha Regiment — were heading for Sevoke from Binnaguri in Jalpaiguri district. Shankar Saha, a civilian, was travelling in another truck just behind the army vehicle when the accident took place, around 30km from Siliguri.
“The truck in front of us suddenly went off the road, broke through the parapet and hurtled into the river 300ft below,” Saha said.
Saha immediately jumped out of his truck, ran back towards a spot where the highway and the river are almost on the same plane and stopped at the water’s edge.
“I could see some of the army men, struggling to stay afloat,” he said. “I found no rope to throw to them, but managed to get hold of some bamboo poles. There were a few other people around and we held the poles out to the jawans. A couple of them got hold of them and scrambled to the bank.”
Within the next couple of hours, army officials from Sevoke, Bagrakote and Kalimpong reached the spot. Two Indian Air Force choppers hovered over the area trying to locate the vehicle and the missing persons, while a fire-engine from Malbazar, rafts from Teesta Bazaar in Kalimpong and members of NGOs from Siliguri launched a rescue operation.
Soon, the lifeless body of Parshuram Tandey, the junior commissioned officer, was hauled out of the river.
The six rescued jawans were identified as Tanvir Yadav, Jyoti Ba, Sandip, Malkar, Silvashankar and Pradip Gorkha, all constables in the regiment. They were taken to Binnaguri army hospital for treatment. The rescuers also recovered four INSAS rifles from the river, probably just a small portion of all the arms the jawans were carrying.
“According to preliminary investigation, the front left tyre of the truck had burst, throwing the vehicle out of control,” said the inspector-general of police (North Bengal), R.J.S. Nalwa.
The Teesta is quite deep at the spot and rescuers initially found it difficult to locate the truck. “We started our rescue and search operations at 10am and finally managed to locate the vehicle around 4.30pm,” said Santosh Lama of Action Adventure and Rescue Group, which pressed two rafts into service.
“We have tied ropes to the truck to prevent it from being swept away. Tomorrow, we will try to get it out of the river, while the search for the missing persons will also continue,” he added.
The incident held up traffic on the highway for a few hours.
Source: The Telegraph
Mishap at Teesta Low Dam Project
at 10:14 PM Labels: kalijhora, nhpc, river teesta, stage iv, teesta low dam project, teesta riverKalijhora : One person died and three others were seriously injured when an NHPC dumper crashed into a security checkpoint at the entrance of the Teesta Low Dam Project (Stage IV) and fell about 30 feet to end up on the Kali riverbed here this afternoon.
The dead has been identified as Bikash Gurung, an employee of Gorkha Security Service, a private security agency engaged by the power major at the project site. The spot is located on the confluence of the Teesta river and the Kali rivulet, about 40km from Kalimpong and 25km from Siliguri.
Another security guard, Bikash Tamang, and the driver and helper of the dumper, whose identities are yet to be established, are among the injured. All three have been admitted to a hospital in Siliguri.
Eyewitnesses said the dumper was entering the project site when the driver lost control of the heavy-duty vehicle and crashed into the checkpoint, before nose-diving 30 feet to land on the Kali. Both Gurung and Tamang were inside the checkpost and had no chance of getting out as the dumper took the tinned structure down with it.
“Till Thursday I was the one doing duty at the checkpoint. I can only thank my stars that I was posted in another area today, or I could have been the victim,” said Jiten Thapa, Gurung’s colleague.
Forty minutes after the incident, which occurred around 4.20pm, Thapa still seemed to be in a state of shock.
“Bikash (Gurung) was from Mungpoo, and was very good to me,” he mumbled.
The NHPC has engaged a number of dumpers like the one that was involved in the accident today at its project site. “The dumpers carry mud from the site to the dumping yard (across the Kali bridge),” said Sanjay Ghosh, personnel manager of Teesta Low Dam Project (Stage IV).
Source: The Telegraph
Sikkim bound taxi accident toll goes up
at 9:10 PM Labels: river teesta, sikkim, sikkim accident, sikkim news, sikkim tourism, sikkim tourists, teesta riverTwo of the three persons gone missing after yesterday’s accident on NH 31A at Likhubir have been traced, one dead and the other alive.
A Mahindra Maxx travelling from Siliguri to Gangtok with 11 people had plunged into the Teesta yesterday afternoon. Apart from those missing, two persons were confirmed dead and six were admitted to Siliguri hospitals with injuries.
The body of Ramesh Acharya was found today floating in the Teesta near Reang, said Kalimpong police. Acharya’s mother P. Varghavi Amma had also died in the accident.
Another missing man, unidentified till this morning, has been traced to Gangtok, alive. Inspector in charge of Kalimpong police station Puran Subba said Shiva Subba was apparently not seriously injured in the accident and had been helped on to a Gangtok-bound car by residents of the area. He is recuperating from head injuries at Sir Thutob Namgyal Memorial Hospital in Gangtok, said a source there.
Mehul Desai, the ICICI bank employee from Calcutta, is still missing. His wife Mridula is under treatment in Siliguri.
Mamata Magar, who was reportedly accompanying Amma, was released from North Bengal Medical College and Hospital today and went back to Rumtek in Sikkim. The relatives of Kheti and Bhawesh Narsana have arrived from Calcutta. The couple, it has been learnt, lives in Bhowanipur.
The Narsanas and the other survivors owe their lives to rafters from Chitre and Malli, located close to Likhubir. These rafters are the unsung heroes of numerous rescue missions on the Teesta, which runs along NH 31A connecting Siliguri to Gangtok.
A team of rafters from these areas had reached the spot to look for survivors, minutes after yesterday’s mishap. Today, they were back in the river, looking for the missing persons.
“Whenever we hear about accidents near the river, we act on our own. We know that a quick response can save lives,” said Sukhbir Tamang, owner of Action Adventure and Rescue Group, a Malli-based rafting unit.
The rescuers had played an important role in the aftermath of the collapse of a Bailey bridge at an NHPC project site at Reang in 2005. They again came to the power major’s aid a few months ago by retrieving the body of one of its officials who died after his jeep fell into the river near Swetijhora.
Tamang added that they “can always do with some assistance from the police and civil administration”. “At times, the police lend us vehicles to ferry our rafts and food to the spot, but that’s about it,” he said.
Kalimpong additional superintendent of police Humayun Kabir said his force shares a “very good relationship” with the rafting units. However, he was tight-lipped about providing further assistance to the rescuers.
Drivers plying on NH 31A said the the government agencies should ensure that the rafters have access to better equipment.
Source: The Telegraph
Kalimpong: A cleaner Teesta river may soon be on view, thanks to a group of nature worshippers.
Rong Ong Prongzom, a Lepcha youth organisation, plans to conduct a clean-up drive on the Teesta river banks at Triveni and Reang on Sunday. It will be part of the preparations for Tendong Lho Rum Faat, the annual Lepcha puja of Thedong Hill near Namchi, Sikkim, held on August 8.
Triveni, the confluence of the Teesta and Rangeet rivers located 16 km from here, is a favourite spot for picnickers. Reang at 27 Mile on NH 31A, on the other hand, is where the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation is currently executing Stage III of the Teesta Low Dam Project.
“Both places are heavily littered, which is why we want to clean them, especially since the Teesta is our holy river,” said Azuk Tamsangmoo, an adviser to the youth organisation and coordinator of Pum Sezom, the apex body of the community.
The nature-worshipping Lepchas are the original inhabitants of Sikkim and the Darjeeling hills. According to figures available with the Indigenous Lepcha Tribal Association, there are about 40,000 of them in the Kalimpong subdivision and another 35,000 or so in Sikkim.
“No Lepcha marriage is solemnised without invoking the name of the Teesta. We won’t be able to do so anymore if we continue to destroy the river as we have been doing till now,” said the coordinator.
Apart from cleaning the riverbed, the youth organisation will also conduct an awareness campaign against the desecration and destruction of the Teesta. “We will put up signboards near the river, urging people not to litter the place,” said Tamsangmoo.
