(Reuters) – Indian rescuers searched on Monday for more than 200 people missing after part of a remote Himalayan glacier broke away, sweeping away bridges, breaking dams and sending a torrent of water, rocks and construction debris down a mountain valley.
Sunday’s disaster below Nanda Devi, India’s second-highest peak, swept away the small Rishiganga hydro-electric project and damaged a bigger one further down the Dhauliganga river being built by state firm NTPC.
Eighteen bodies had been recovered so far, officials said.
Most of the missing were people working on the two projects, part of the many the government has been building deep in the mountains of Uttarakhand state as part of a development push.
“As of now, around 203 people are missing,” state chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat said.
Mohd Farooq Azam, assistant professor, glaciology & hydrology at the Indian Institute of Technology in Indore, said a hanging glacier fractured.
“Our current hypothesis is that the water accumulated and locked in the debris-snow below the glacier was released when the glacier-rock mass fell,” he said.
Videos on social media showed water surging through a small dam site, washing away construction equipment and bringing down small bridges.
“Everything was swept away, people, cattle and trees,” Sangram Singh Rawat, a former village council member of Raini, the site closest to the Rishiganga project, told media.
Experts said it had snowed heavily last week in the Nanda Devi area and it was possible that some of the snow had started melting and may have led to an avalanche.
