Dehradun/Lucknow, July 9
A team of 74 members of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) has run out of food and medicines in Uttarakhand’s Kedarnath after repeated attempts to airdrop supplies for them failed due to inclement weather, officials said today.

Official sources said the NDRF team that had been in Kedarnath Valley after the mid-June flash floods and landslides was left with just one day’s ration and some of the members had also taken ill.

The rescue team had not received supplies for the past five days due to poor weather conditions. Several attempts by the state government to airdrop supplies were aborted yesterday as inclement weather and continual rain grounded air traffic, sources added.

KK Tamta, nodal officer of the Health Department stationed at Guptkashi, said doctors with the NDRF team told him about the outbreak of diseases. Of the 74 members, at least 40 were suffering from diarrhoea and gastroenteritis, he said.

“At Guptkashi, ration and medicines are awaiting to be airdropped to Kedarnath for the past two days,” an official said.

“Two special planes full of food stuff, medicines and other material were not able to take off yesterday due to poor visibility and bad weather,” said Subhash Kumar, chief secretary of the hill state.

The weather can imperil the team’s wellbeing, admitted an official, adding that a 15-member team of the Army’s Sikh Regiment has been sent from Rudraprayag to help the rescuers in Kedarnath Valley.

A team of trained mountaineers will also be dispatched to the valley from the Kalimath-Ukimath side.

Officials said 93 bodies had been cremated so far, but lack of wood for funeral and inclement weather had been delaying the cremation of the remaining bodies. “Several tonnes of wood, ghee and other things required to perform last rites of Hindus were to be airdropped in the Kedar Valley, but the operations have been hit by fog and rains,” an official involved in the operations said.

Meanwhile, torrential rains have killed at least seven persons in other parts of the hill state over the past two days. Apart from this, cloudbursts have flattened over a dozen houses in Chamoli. Four bridges have also been washed away. Four labourers were killed while clearing a road in the Dwarikhal area of Pauri Garhwal, while three persons-two children and a woman-died when a wall of a house collapsed in the Vikas Nagar area of Dehradun. The Mandakini washed away five shops in Agastyamuni.

The Ganga is in spate in Haridwar and Rishikesh and many villages are flooded. The Rishikesh district administration has alerted people living on the riverside of an impending flood as the Ganga is flowing well above the “warning mark” of 339 m and is likely to breach the 339.7 m danger mark soon.

— IANS