The bodies of the last four of the trapped labourers were pulled out from the site of the avalanche-hit Border Roads Organisation (BRO) camp in Chamoli on Sunday, taking the death toll to eight as authorities ended the nearly 60-hour rescue operation.
Army doctors said 46 workers who were rescued on Saturday have been brought to the military hospital in Jyotirmath. Two of them have been referred to AIIMS, Rishikesh. Three of the workers are in critical condition, Lt Col D S Maldhya said.
The body of the last missing worker has also been retrieved. The recovery marks the culmination of the Mana village rescue operation, Defence Public Relations Officer (PRO) Lt Col Manish Shrivastava said.
"Out of the 54 labourers who went missing after the avalanche, 46 were rescued alive and eight found dead," Chamoli District Magistrate Sandeep Tiwari said.
Four bodies were retrieved on Saturday and as many on Sunday.
Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami expressed grief at the death of eight people in the avalanche even as he thanked all the agencies involved in the rescue operations.
"All rescue teams, including the local administration, Army, SDRF worked with indomitable courage, loyalty and dedication. Despite difficult conditions, they put in all their strength to evacuate the workers safely, which is highly commendable. I salute their courage and dedication," Dhami said.
He also thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh for providing necessary support.
He said proper arrangements have been made in hospitals for the treatment of injured workers. The process of handing over the bodies of the deceased workers to their families is underway, the CM said.
The chief minister also gave instructions to develop a mechanism for monitoring avalanches so that the loss in such incidents is minimised in future.
Disaster Management Secretary Vinod Kumar Suman said the rescuers did a commendable job by completing such a difficult operation amid weather challenges in snowy terrain so quickly.
Advance equipment like victim locating cameras and thermal imaging cameras were deployed on Sunday to trace the missing labourers, SDRF commandant Arpan Yaduvanshi told PTI.
The instruments that help locate people trapped in a rubble heap had also been used during the Reini disaster, he said.
The avalanche hit the BRO camp between Mana and Badrinath on Friday, burying the 54 workers inside eight containers and a shed.
Earlier, it was believed that the total number of trapped labourers was 55 but one of them was on unauthorised leave and had reached home safely.
More than 200 personnel from the disaster management authority, Indo-Tibetan Border Police, BRO, National Disaster Response Force, State Disaster Response Force, Indian Air Force, district administration, health department and fire brigade were engaged in the rescue operation.
Located three kilometres from Badrinath, Mana is the last village on the India-Tibet border at a height of 3,200 metres.
The last missing worker found dead was 43-year-old Arvind Kumar Singh from the Clement Town area in Dehradun. The others whose bodies were pulled out on Sunday were identified as Anil Kumar (21) from Rudrapur in Uttarakhand's Udham Singh Nagar district, Ashok (28) from Fatehpur in Uttar Pradesh and Harmesh from Una in Himachal Pradesh, the officials said.
The bodies have been brought to Jyotirmath by helicopter where the post-mortem was being done at the Community Health Centre.
Helicopters, sniffer dogs and thermal imaging technology were used to expedite the rescue operation, officials said.
Six helicopters -- three of the Indian Army Aviation Corps, two of the Indian Air Force (IAF) and a civil chopper hired by the Army were engaged in the operation, the defence PRO said.
The rescue operation lasted nearly 60 hours amid inclement weather for the first two days. However, the weather was largely clear on Sunday.
Earlier in the day, CM Dhami visited the Uttarakhand State Emergency Operation Centre to monitor the rescue operations while Lt Gen Anindya Sengupta, GOC-in C, Central Command, and Lt Gen D G Mishra, GOC, Uttar Bharat, remained at the avalanche site.
The traumatised survivors brought to the military hospital in Jyotirmath recounted their horrifying ordeal.
BRO worker Jagbir Singh from Amritsar said he was sleeping in his container camp when the snowslide sent them tumbling several hundred metres down.
"The container we were in went rolling down. By the time we could figure out what had happened, I found a colleague had died and one of my legs was fractured. I also had an injury in the head. There were heaps of snow everywhere," he said.
They somehow trudged to what appeared to be a kiosk with very little space, which was some distance from where they were stuck in the snow.
"We were rescued after 25 hours during which 14-15 of us had just one blanket to cover us. We ate snow when we felt thirsty," he said.
Munna Prasad from Vaishali district in Bihar said, "We lay scattered under snow for around 12 hours. Snow was clogging our noses. It was difficult to breathe. However, thankfully the Army and ITBP teams came to our rescue before it was too late."
Vipin Kumar from Himachal Pradesh said everything happened in a flash. An Army guest house served as a shelter for many stranded labourers who spent nearly 25 hours in sub-zero temperatures without proper clothing, he said.
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