Rescue teams bank on lessons from August 2023 Shiv Bawari tragedy amid ops following July 31 Himachal cloudbursts

As many as 28 people went missing in the incident. Although the bodies of all 28 victims were eventually recovered — some recognizable and many beyond recognition — it took at least nine days of search and rescue efforts to spot them. Thirteen of the 28 bodies were found at a distance of around 6 to 9 kilometre from the Shiv Bawari Temple, which was buried under a major landslide.

Sanjeev Gandhi, Shimla Superintendent of Police (SP), who supervised last year’s search and rescue operation, on Saturday said, “On August 1, when the rescue teams reached the worst-affected village of Samej, we concluded that the victims might have been swept away more than 20 k from where they had been residing.”

He added, “We divided the entire stretch of the Samej Khad rivulet, from the village of Samej to the confluence where it meets the Sutlej River, into six points. Two bodies were found between the village of Samej and the confluence point, but we had to extend the search area up to 85 km, reaching as far as the Sunni Dam on the Sutlej River. We have been following the same procedure we used last year to recover the missing victims of the Shiv Bawari Temple tragedy.”

Another aspect of the search and rescue operation is identifying the victims. Although DNA profiling of the victims’ kin was considered during the Shiv Bawari tragedy, it wasn’t needed as the victims were identified through their belongings. Gandhi said, “This year, when 34 people went missing from Samej in Shimla. We decided to collect DNA samples from the kin of the missing people on the second day of the rescue operation. A mutilated body of a woman has been identified through DNA profiling. DNA samples were collected by a team of forensic and medical experts. Our search and rescue operation is based on five aspects: rescue, food and shelter, restoration and rehabilitation of displaced families, search and retrieval of the living and the dead, and identification and handling of post-mortem investigations.”

The five cloudbursts, including three in Kullu and one each in Mandi and Shimla, occurred on the night of July 31.

The village of Samej in Shimla witnessed the most casualties, followed by the districts of Mandi and Kullu. Over 55 people, including 34 in Shimla alone, are missing. The bodies of 28 victims have been recovered so far, 15 of which were found by rescue teams in Shimla.

Meanwhile, Commandant of the 14th Battalion of NDRF, Baljinder Singh, visited all the areas affected by the cloudbursts in Himachal Pradesh. The NDRF personnel from the 14th Battalion have been deployed in Shimla, Kullu, and Mandi.