VIVEK CHHETRI AND RAJEEV RAVIDAS
Darjeeling/Kalimpong, June 17: Four members of a family in Kurseong, three of them children, were buried alive in debris from a landslide that followed a bout of torrential rain in the hills early this morning.
The rain also triggered mudslides at two places on National Highway 31A, Sikkim’s only road link, holding up nearly 500 vehicles for five hours.
Nashim Akhtar, a 35-year-old hawker, and his family members were asleep in their one-storied tin house in St Mary’s area when mud from the mountainside came down on the dwelling around 3.30am. “The wife, Meenaz Begum, was the only survivor as she had gone out to attend nature’s call at that very moment,” said D.P. Singh, the superintendent of police Darjeeling.
The police along with the fire brigade and the civil defence personnel had arrived at the spot around 4.30am.
Nashim along with his son Mohammed Faisal and daughters Musurt Banu and 45 day- old Nusurt Banu were crushed to death in the bed, eye witnesses said.
Nashim’s brother Nurul Hooda, who lives about 500 metres uphill, said: “We heard a loud noise and we immediately came out of our house and went to my brother’s place. We found Meenaz Begum outside the house but her feet were stuck in the slush. We could pull out 10-year-old Faisal (dead by then) but since boulders and mud were still coming down, we could not pull out the father and the daughters.”
Pankaj Sharma, a resident of the area, said the rain had started at 11pm last night. “We had to wait till 6am today for it to stop before we could pull out the bodies. From the condition of the house, they had been buried alive instantly it seemed,” said Pankaj Sharma, a resident of the area.
Eye witnesses said the newborn’s body had been severed into two parts probably hit by the tin shed under impact.
The wife did not suffer any injuries but is in a state of shock.
Hooda said he would take the bodies to their native village at Motihara district in Bihar after the post-mortems were completed.
Eye witnesses also said the mudslide, on the outskirts of Kurseong town, was not a major one but the house had come in the path of the flowing debris.
On NH31A, the mudslides occurred at 27th Mile and near Seti Jhora, both in Kalimpong subdivision.
The mudslides were triggered between 6am and 7am. Piles of mud came flowing down on the road, bringing traffic to a standstill. Sources in the Border Roads Organisation (BRO), which maintains the highway, said the Seti Jhora debris was cleared and opened to traffic within 15 minutes of its men reaching the spot with earth-moving vehicles. By 6.30am, the road had been cleared in this spot.
But the BRO workers had a tough time clearing the mud at 27Mile and restore traffic on the road because of a pick-up van that had got stuck in the slush. “Two cranes struggled to retrieve the van from the slush. We managed to clear the road by 12.30pm,” said a BRO source. The area, which is just above an under construction NHPC power project and 37km from the Sikkim border town Rangpo, is prone to landslides.
Some of the commuters stuck in the vehicles walked across the mudslides to avail of transport on the other side. “Around 500 vehicles were stranded on both sides of the highway,” said a local eyewitness.
A Siliguri-bound bus which had left Kalimpong at 7pm with about 14-15 passengers returned with another group of passengers at 12.30 pm. “We had reached 27th Mile around 8am. We waited for about one-and-half hours but when we realised it would take some more time for the slide to be cleared, the passengers crossed over to the other side on foot and took another vehicle to Siliguri. We returned with passengers who had similarly crossed over to this side,” said the conductor of the bus.
Among the passengers was a four-member family from Malda. “We came here to spend a couple of nights before moving to Gangtok. We were coming from Siliguri in a hired Maruti van, but chose to shift to this bus after crossing the landslide-hit stretch on foot because we were uncertain about how long we would have to wait before the road was cleared,” said Samsul Haq, the head of the family.
But by 8am, the rain had stopped completely.
At Dhobi khola, about a kilometre form Kurseong town, a pickup van plunged 100 feet down from National Highway 55 after a portion of the road caved in. Traffic however remained unaffected on this route.
Source: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110618/jsp/northeast/story_14127559.jsp
Darjeeling/Kalimpong, June 17: Four members of a family in Kurseong, three of them children, were buried alive in debris from a landslide that followed a bout of torrential rain in the hills early this morning.
The rain also triggered mudslides at two places on National Highway 31A, Sikkim’s only road link, holding up nearly 500 vehicles for five hours.
Nashim Akhtar, a 35-year-old hawker, and his family members were asleep in their one-storied tin house in St Mary’s area when mud from the mountainside came down on the dwelling around 3.30am. “The wife, Meenaz Begum, was the only survivor as she had gone out to attend nature’s call at that very moment,” said D.P. Singh, the superintendent of police Darjeeling.
The police along with the fire brigade and the civil defence personnel had arrived at the spot around 4.30am.
Nashim along with his son Mohammed Faisal and daughters Musurt Banu and 45 day- old Nusurt Banu were crushed to death in the bed, eye witnesses said.
Nashim’s brother Nurul Hooda, who lives about 500 metres uphill, said: “We heard a loud noise and we immediately came out of our house and went to my brother’s place. We found Meenaz Begum outside the house but her feet were stuck in the slush. We could pull out 10-year-old Faisal (dead by then) but since boulders and mud were still coming down, we could not pull out the father and the daughters.”
Pankaj Sharma, a resident of the area, said the rain had started at 11pm last night. “We had to wait till 6am today for it to stop before we could pull out the bodies. From the condition of the house, they had been buried alive instantly it seemed,” said Pankaj Sharma, a resident of the area.
Eye witnesses said the newborn’s body had been severed into two parts probably hit by the tin shed under impact.
The wife did not suffer any injuries but is in a state of shock.
Hooda said he would take the bodies to their native village at Motihara district in Bihar after the post-mortems were completed.
Eye witnesses also said the mudslide, on the outskirts of Kurseong town, was not a major one but the house had come in the path of the flowing debris.
On NH31A, the mudslides occurred at 27th Mile and near Seti Jhora, both in Kalimpong subdivision.
The mudslides were triggered between 6am and 7am. Piles of mud came flowing down on the road, bringing traffic to a standstill. Sources in the Border Roads Organisation (BRO), which maintains the highway, said the Seti Jhora debris was cleared and opened to traffic within 15 minutes of its men reaching the spot with earth-moving vehicles. By 6.30am, the road had been cleared in this spot.
But the BRO workers had a tough time clearing the mud at 27Mile and restore traffic on the road because of a pick-up van that had got stuck in the slush. “Two cranes struggled to retrieve the van from the slush. We managed to clear the road by 12.30pm,” said a BRO source. The area, which is just above an under construction NHPC power project and 37km from the Sikkim border town Rangpo, is prone to landslides.
Some of the commuters stuck in the vehicles walked across the mudslides to avail of transport on the other side. “Around 500 vehicles were stranded on both sides of the highway,” said a local eyewitness.
A Siliguri-bound bus which had left Kalimpong at 7pm with about 14-15 passengers returned with another group of passengers at 12.30 pm. “We had reached 27th Mile around 8am. We waited for about one-and-half hours but when we realised it would take some more time for the slide to be cleared, the passengers crossed over to the other side on foot and took another vehicle to Siliguri. We returned with passengers who had similarly crossed over to this side,” said the conductor of the bus.
Among the passengers was a four-member family from Malda. “We came here to spend a couple of nights before moving to Gangtok. We were coming from Siliguri in a hired Maruti van, but chose to shift to this bus after crossing the landslide-hit stretch on foot because we were uncertain about how long we would have to wait before the road was cleared,” said Samsul Haq, the head of the family.
But by 8am, the rain had stopped completely.
At Dhobi khola, about a kilometre form Kurseong town, a pickup van plunged 100 feet down from National Highway 55 after a portion of the road caved in. Traffic however remained unaffected on this route.
Source: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110618/jsp/northeast/story_14127559.jsp