Links snapped or missing,quake zone presents access problem

Blockade after blockade on the road,disaster relief team manages little beyond an aerial survey.

It took Dhiren Chhetri of Mangan,the town nearest the epicentre of Sundays earthquake,21 hours to take his wife Kabita to a hospital in Singtam,70 km away. Her pelvic bone fractured,she spent the first 12 of these hours under a tent,waiting painfully for her husband to find transportation.

Chhetri,who works in an Army tiffin unit,eventually got help from the Army but the nine-hour journey from Monday morning was arduous. With boulders and debris presenting half a dozen blockades,Kabita had to be transported by stretcher from one Army vehicle on one side of every blockade to another vehicle on the other.

With the base health centre in Mangan having placed a priority on people with serious injuries and fractures,many remain stuck in Mangan for want of transportation facilities. Inclement weather has affected supply of relief material too. Till Monday evening,2,000 packets of dry food and matchboxes remained at Bagdogra,plans to airdrop these thwarted by the weather.

A National Disaster Relief Force team of 101 members,who flew out of Kolkata on Sunday night,could reach Mangan only on Tuesday afternoon and still struggled for access to the areas worst hit. For lack of enough aircraft and places to land,they had to travel in three buses from Singtam.

The greatest damage has been in areas like Lachung and Chungthang,which the NDRF team has not yet been able to reach. All it managed was an aerial recce of these areas by a team led by by Commandant J P Yadav. Vast earthquake-hit areas have not been reached yet,he later briefed the Sikkim Government.

He reported having seen a bus hanging amid debris near Tung,a tourist spot where a large number of people are feared trapped. The commandant also reported that an entire village in Tung appeared to have been buried under the debris. In Lachung valley,a large number of concrete structures have collapsed,the remnants of walls now visible to the ground,with no clue about how many people are trapped underneath.

The Army and Air Force have three helipads in Lachung valley and sources said they have managed some emergency evacuations,carrying out 28 critically injured persons including six children and seven teens.

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The NDRF teams brief is to carry out search and rescue work where houses have collapsed. It has the equipment to locate and rescue survivors provided they have the access. They dont have the expertise to clear the road,the commandant told government officials,adding that till they get access they will have no role to play.

For the Army,efforts to restore road links have involved the removal of piles of boulders and mud. The 52 battalion of the Army Engineering Corps spent the morning removing rubble from the road linking Gangtok to Mangan,at the very spot they had cleared on Monday before fresh landslides arrived. Jaspal Singh of the Army said: We clear one blockade and then have to rush to another site after a fresh disruption.

Close to the site,at Phengla,tents have been put up for villagers to stay overnight. The Army is serving them food twice a day. The villagers have been going home by day to salvage whatever belongings they can.