More than 500 tourists, scouts from Kolkata, Durgapur and Barrackpore, gone missing after the devastating glacial lake outburst leading to flash flood in North Sikkim, have been traced back by the HAM Radio operators of Bengal.
The kin of two tourist families comprising six heads from Durgapur’s Bhiringhee remained clueless after the catastrophic disaster.
The district administration had sought assistance from the state inter agency group – a voluntary special purpose vehicle for rescue operations in which HAM Radio operators of West Bengal Radio Club are also accommodated.
Ambarish Nag Biswas, secretary, WB Radio Club said, “The marooned Durgapur families were traced back in Lachen by our licensed operator Soumik Ghosh this morning. The families couldn’t contact either their kin or the civil administration for want of telecommunications. The batteries of their cell phones were also exhausted.”
He added: “We’ve identified 547 tourists from different parts of the country in Sikkim and today we’ve uploaded their signatures in the public domain for their true identification and to facilitate their kin in the plains.”
The families, headed by Soumitra Banerjee and Nilendu Bikash Mukherjee, had left for Sikkim last week.
The SDM, Durgapur, Sourabh Chatterjee, said, “The authorities confirmed that they will be airlifted in a day or two.”
The HAM operators of the WBRC also have rescued a 12- member group of tourists from Gujarat and one 150 member group of scouts of Barrackpore from the disaster-hit Sikkim.
Ambarish told The Statesman: “The scouts already returned to Kolkata at 3pm yesterday.”