Tung (North Sikkim), Sep 23: With rescue teams facing difficulties to reach some farflung quake-hit areas in Sikkim, hundreds of survivors are trekking out of their cut-off villages, crawling sometimes to negotiate dangerous stretches.
Hundreds of villagers from inaccessible higher areas of Lachung, Lachen and Chungthan have gathered here after an arudos trek down and are being taken to safe places.
Army sources said hundreds of villagers reached Tung, 10 km from Chungthang, one of the worst-hit areas, and many were still trekking down from remote areas of Lachen, Lachung and Chungthang.
Karma Bhutia (30), who arrived from Lachen today after trekking for two days, told PTI, “We panicked at fresh landslides triggered by rain at Lachen on Wednesday night, when huge boulders started hurtling down the hills.
“We first escaped to Guma and spent the night there and next morning we started trekking through extremely difficult terrains covered with debris,” he said.
Bhutia spoke how some of the villagers had to crawl some distances in spells since the wet soil tended to loosen and which might cave in any moment if they walked on such stretches.
Five days after the 6.8 magnitude quake shook Sikkim and neighbouring areas, stranded people showed grit and determination to sail through the tense and anxiety-filled hours 22 engineers of a private construction firm have been rescued and are being sent to Gangtok today.
Army sources said 22 engineers and technicians of Poddar Construction, engaged by the Teesta Urja Project, were rescued from Tung, five days after their bus was stranded during the powerful tremor in Sikkim.
“Their bus was halted by a huge boulder and our men rescued them from Tung yesterday. They will be sent to Gangtok today,” they said.
According to project manager of Poddar construction Bipul Halder, “The situation is very bad. We were stranded and could not come out of the bus. We had to sustain with the little ration left with us.”
Labourers returning to Gangtok from the Teesta Stage III hydel project site at Chungthang in worst-hit North District today claimed that 70 of their colleagues were still missing.
A group of labourers belonging to the Euphoria company, one of several companies engaged by Teesta-Urja company which is implementing the project, returned to Gangtok last evening. They said there were around 5,000 people still at Chungthang including labourers and project officials and that there were many bodies still to be pulled out of the debris.
However, neither the North District administration nor the Teesta-Urja company has confirmed the labourers' account. The labourers said nearly all houses at Chungthang were damaged and neither was there clean water to drink. They said an effort was underway to locate a local labourer who had gone missing near one of the tunnels at the time of the earthquake.
“He had gone out to get milk for us,” the labourers said adding while these labourers usually work in the tunnels, they were fortunate not to be in the tunnels on September 18, the day the earthquake struck, as they HAD a holiday on account of festival.
“Had we been working in the tunnel, we would all have been washed away,” says one who hails from Kalimpong. PTI
