Mumbai: A tragedy is unfolding in the little hamlet of Malin, Ambegaon, some 120km from Pune, where a massive landslide has left 3O people dead and more than 150 feared trapped.
More than 24 hours after the Wednesday morning landslide, authorities said the chances of survival were slim for anyone still trapped under the mud in Malin, a village of some 700 people in Pune district of Maharashtra state.
Suresh Jadhav, a district official, said around 40 homes were wiped out.
Two days of torrential rains triggered the landslide, which continued to pound the area as rescuers brought bodies covered in soaked white sheets to waiting ambulances while relatives stood by weeping.
The few stunned survivors are unable to comprehend how their families and homes lie beneath a layer of slush and sludge.
People living in nearby villages and some survivors, speaking to visiting TV reporters and journalists, described how they heard a loud bomb-like explosion on Wednesday morning at a time when there were torrential rains.
Two brothers from Malin who had set off to tend their nearby fields early in the morning said, “We heard something like the sound of an explosion and in seconds our entire village disappeared under heaps of mud. Where were we supposed to look for our families? We could see nothing except vast sheets of mud.”
Another dazed villager sat holding his head.
“Only my son in Pune and I are left. I have lost my mother, father, wife and young daughter. Eleven members of my uncle’s family are also lying under the debris,” he said.
The few who were not present in the village when the disaster occurred may have escaped death but the villager cried, “What am I supposed to do and what is there to do when my entire family is gone.”
In another case, Vithal Titkare, 24, employed by a bank in Pune, had come to spend a few days with his wife at her maternal home in Malin. When his brother-in-law asked everyone to run out of the house, he was caught under a broken door, which in fact saved him by allowing him to breathe while his wife Deepali and mother-in-law died in the landslide. He was then admitted at the local primary health centre where he is being treated. His father-in-law was also saved.
With the death toll already reaching 30 and expected to rise, local people are also worried that when a mass cremation is to be carried out, there would be very few relatives to conduct the funeral rites as most of them are buried under the debris.
One villager was concerned as to how the funeral pyres could be lit when the wood was so wet.
With many more villages perched in the hilly areas, the district administration has ordered evacuation of about half a dozen villages to safer areas.
Teams from the National Disaster Response Force had retrieved 30 bodies, rescued 10 people, with around 150 still buried under the debris.
A mother and her three-month-old girl were also rescued from the debris, but such happy instances are far and few.
Rescuers have been working overnight against the challenges of heavy rain, communication hurdles and virtually inaccessible roads to this remote village.
As many as 50 homes have been flattened by the landslide and it is still not clear what time the hill of rocks and mud came crashing down. According to police, the landslide occurred at about 5am following a heavy downpour whilst eye witnesses claimed it may have happened at about 7am as a driver of a state transport bus passing through failed to find the village which was his regular service stop.
— With inputs from AP
