HUMANITARIAN EFFORTS BY NAVY AND AIR FORCE AT CHITRAKONDA
Seven days have passed since
tragedy struck at Chitrakonda. A large contingent of
Naval divers have toiled from first light to nightfall on 
every day of the ensuing
period, through difficult conditions in cold, muddy and crocodile-infested
waters with poor underwater visibility, to extricate in tandem with the Police
and Civil authorities, twenty four bodies from the sunken launch. Naval and Air
Force helicopters have braved unfavourable weather
providing casualty evacuation, search effort and logistic support.
The first challenge, in
the absence of any telltale signs, was to localise
the search area, as combing reservoir would have taken an inordinate amount of
time. A probable area was arrived at careful analysis witness accounts from the
survivors, conduct of an aerial survey, and reconstruction of the sequence of
events. While state of the art Side Scan Sonars,
flown in from Naval ships allowed technology to peep
under water, the hardy divers employed everything they knew, including searches
using snag lines, grapnels and underwater ropeways.
Chitrakonda reservoir, unlike other
water bodies, has a large number of big tree trunks lying on its bed. The
reservoir bed itself is jagged, as the water body lies among hills, with depths
varying randomly from 15 to 40 meters, with very steep gradients. These factors
rendered unworkable the conventional method of ‘trawling’ the
bottom dragging a weighted rope underwater. Another challenge was the muddy
waters, which forced the divers to ‘find’ by ‘touch and
feel’, thus limiting the area they could sweep at one time. This
painstaking search was done by Naval divers inching
along an underwater ropeway, groping in virtual darkness, lit only by a
helmet-mounted light that penetrated barely a foot ahead.
The boat when finally
located on 02 Jul 08, was resting its left side on a lake bed that descended
steeply at an angle of almost 70 degrees, making the boat itself nearly
vertical, with the front end embedded in slush. This position limited the
access into the boat and also restricted the number of divers who could work
simultaneously without getting entangled. Further, at a depth of 37 meters
where the boat rested, the divers could work in spells of just 17 minutes, as
exceeding this would jeopardise their lives.
For retrieving the
bodies, the Naval divers, with air cylinders strapped
to their backs, would crawl in through the windows that measured just two feet
by two feet and carefully draw the bodies out and commence the ascent to the top.
Technicalities of underwater diving necessitate the divers to stop at a middle
depth for five minutes to allow their bodies to acclimatize to the changing
pressures. These five minutes spent suspended in the dark between the bottom
and the surface, holding on to a corpse, would arguably be the longest anyone
could ever spend.
The task of recovering
bodies had to be complemented with Naval and Air Force air effort, which would
ferry the causalities and the bodies to
As the attempts to winch
the boat up have not succeeded yet and are wrought with innate delays, diving
has remained the only practical method of recovering the rest of the personnel.
But as the sun rises on Day Seven of the tragedy, the hope of recovering all
bodies has received a fillip with the door accessing the front portion of the
boat having been found by nightfall on Friday. Vice Admiral Nirmal Verma, Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief,
Eastern Naval Command made a visit to the area today, 05 Jul 08 for a first
hand appreciation of the operations underway. A quick retrieval of a
large number of the occupants that are expected to be in this part of the boat
can now be hoped for.
For the military man on
the scene, tomorrow is yet another day, to be spent in selfless service to the
nation, his training and discipline, the bulwarks of his performance.