Mass cremations of victims are taking place in India’s flood-ravaged state of Uttarakhand on Thursday even as rescue operations to evacuate stranded people entered their last phase, officials said.
More than 840 people died in flashfloods and landslides in the mountainous state on June 15-16, following heavy monsoon rains.
A total of 357 bodies were being cremated in the worst-hit Hindu pilgrimage town of Kedarnath, Munshi Somwal, a disaster management official posted there, said by telephone.
The cremations were delayed for several days because of bad weather. Truckloads of wood were sent to Kedarnath for the cremations after DNA samples were taken for identification and postmortems conducted.
Fears of disease outbreaks loomed in some regions, with putrefying bodies buried in debris or being washed up in lower regions of rivers.
Around 103,000 stranded pilgrims, tourists and villagers had been rescued by air and road in 11 days of evacuations, state disaster management chief Bhaskar Joshi said.
“This is the last phase of rescue operations to evacuate people in and around Badrinath, Dharasu and Harsil areas. Some 3,000 people are still stuck in various areas,” he said.
Evacuations continued intermittently through Thursday, with 60 helicopters conducting sorties whenever rains eased.
Following rescue work, authorities will focus on searching for 300 missing people as well as rehabilitation work in villages where houses, roads and bridges have been destroyed by mud and debris.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna has said the “Himalayan tsunami” has set the state’s economy back by three years, and preliminary estimates put the loss at 30 billion rupees ($ 500 million).