26 dead, hundreds missing: What we know so far about Uttarakhand flash flood

Rescuers have recovered 26 bodies from different areas hit by the glacier burst in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand even as authorities have said more than 170 people are still missing. They have also said that some of the people reported missing after the glacier burst have reported their presence to the administration after the worst disaster to hit the Himalayan region in eight years. The surging waters washed away homes, damaged two major dams, cut off 13 villages, and snapped crucial road links and bridges that connect far-flung areas in the mountainous region.

"The rescue workers have recovered total 26 bodies with about 171 still missing, which includes 11 villagers and two cops, while the remaining ones are workers from the two dam sites," Ashok Kumar, the state's director general of police who is monitoring the rescue operation, said.

The disaster is the worst to hit Uttarakhand since the Kedarnath floods in 2013 which killed 5,700 people and highlighted the impact of the climate crisis and degradation of the fragile ecology of the region.

Here what we know so far about the Chamoli disaster:

• At least 1,000 disaster response, military and paramilitary personnel worked to clear a 1.7-km tunnel in the badly hit National Thermal Power Corporation's 530 MW Tapovan Vishnugrad project, where at least 35 people are still stranded in waist-deep muck. They had rescued 12 people stuck in a small tunnel at the NTPC dam site on Sunday.

• State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) said on Monday that so far five people have come forward and reported their presence to the administration.

• Most of those missing were workers at the two power plants, with some trapped in a U-shaped 2.7-kilometre tunnel in Tapovan that filled with mud and rocks when the flood hit.

• The rescue operation is underway at Tapovan tunnel, Joshimath in Uttarakhand, where Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) team will work overnight to take out debris and try to find survivors from the tunnel.

• Personnel of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police's (ITBP's) 8th Battalion carried nearly 100 bags of ration and utility items from the Lata village base and control station to villages of Jugaju and Juwagwar on Monday. These villages were cut-off after the floods in Dhauliganga in the state.

• Two helipad activation teams of Indian Air Force Air Traffic Control and Meteorological personnel are at Joshimath and Gaucher for coordination of high availability disaster recovery (HADR) operations. "Two Advanced Light Helicopters (ALH) are forward staged at Gauchar (Uttarakhand), while Mi-17s, Chinook and ALH are operating from Dehradun," Indian Air Force said in a statement.

• Uttarakhand chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat has directed SDRF to release ₹20 crore funds to carry out rescue and relief operations in the state.

• Union power minister RK Sinha has said Tapovan suffered a loss of about ₹1,500 crore but ruled out the possibility of scrapping the project. "It (NTPC Tapovan project) was supposed to be commissioned by 2023 but now it is obvious that the target year would be pushed ahead. However, we have no intention to scrap the project with the main focus right now on the rescue operation," said Sinha.

• Scientists in the United States, who looked at satellite images, suggested it was caused by a landslide onto a glacier which led to debris flooding the river. However, a group of Indian scientists said there was no landslide or avalanche. They have pointed at the possibility of a glacial lake that led to the breach and said that the release of water from an underground glacial lake led to flash floods and inundation in the valley.

• Uttarakhand chief minister Rawat has said the director of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) told him that the Chamoli disaster was caused by sliding of a part of a mountain after receiving snowfall two-three days ago. "Isro director, on the basis of a report by the organisation, told me this place is not an avalanche-prone area and the images from two-three days ago showed that there was no glacier at all on the mountain," Rawat said, according to news agency ANI. "After receiving some snowfall a couple of days ago, a part of the mountain slid and caused lakhs of metric tonnes of snow to fall down at once causing the disaster," he added.