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Northeast India quake toll crosses 100
India Blooms News Service
Gangtok, Sept 21 (IBNS): The death toll from Sunday’s earthquake that struck mountainous northeastern India, Nepal and Tibet, rose to 112 on Wednesday media reports said, even as several hundred were believed to be still stranded in the worst affected north districts of Sikkim.
Chief Minister Pawan Kumar Chamling said that the state had suffered losses of about Rs 1 lakh crore from the 6.9 magnitude earthquake that struck on Sunday night, while aerial surveys revealed huge damage between Gangtok and Chung Thang.
Around four fifths of the houses at Chung Thang have suffered damages with major and minor cracks, media reports said, adding several people have lost their lives and many families have been displaced.
More than 3,000 people have rescued in Sikkim so far, as rescue workers with sensors and sniffer dogs searched through the rubble, speeding up work on Wednesday as the weather cleared up.
Scores of villages in north Sikkim, near the state’s broder with Tibet, remained unreachable as rescue workers and defence forces tried to build makeshift roads, using everything from bare hands to heavy construction equipment.
On Tuesday, defence troops had to take an alternate road to reach the worst affected areas as National Highway 31-A from Mangan to Gangtok was closed due to heavy landslides, as heavy rains slowed the relief efforts and made conditions worse for many homeless villagers.
More than 6,000 defence troops, even as nine helicopters dropped food to villages, airlifted doctors, evacuated the injured and helped take stock of the damage, Indian Home Secretary R K Singh said.
Even though power and telephone lines had been restored in Sikkim’s capital Gangtok, most of the other quake hit areas of the state continued to be in the dark.
Rescue efforts are covering 62 villages with 20 medical centers that have treated some 370 people, while eight relief centers have been set up where over 2,700 people have been provided shelter, a top military official said.
Meanwhile, Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday morning reached Sikkim to visit the victims
Gandhi reached Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim, in an army helicopter after reaching Bagdogra by plane.
Rahul Gandhi would next visit Meghalaya to address Youth Congress activists.
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