According to official figures released on Friday, 221 tourists are still stranded in Lahaul-Spiti in Himachal Pradesh after a downpour and landslides triggered by heavy rains.
191 are local tourists from Himachal Pradesh and 30 more from Punjab, Haryana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Delhi and Odisha.
The county government announced that they were all taken to safe places. Officials said that depending on weather conditions, people are primarily transported by helicopter from Udaipur to the Sissu Helipad in Lahaul. They will then be transported to Manali via the Atal Tunnel, the official added. MONSUN UPDATES
Deputy Commissioner Neeraj Kumar previously asked the Himachal Pradesh government for helicopter assistance for their evacuation, a district spokesman said. Depending on the weather, operations with a helicopter of the state government are also planned.
Their evacuation by the road appears difficult as the route via Pangi is unlikely to be ready by Friday evening, Sudesh Kumar Mokhta, director of state disaster management, previously said.
Several roads and bridges in the district were damaged by bad weather.
A tourist from Punjab’s Hoshiarpur, Ravindra Sood, was quoted by PTI as saying: “More than 100 tourists have been stranded in Trilokinat and 35 in Fudan villages because of the recent downpours in the Jhalman, Shansha and Thirot areas of the Lauhal Valley.”
Sood said the number of people stranded in the villages of Jhalwan and Udaipur is not yet known and the road has been damaged in several places between Kirting and Thirot.
The phone network wasn’t working properly, Sood said.
When contacted, Lahaul-Spiti’s deputy commissioner, Neeraj Kumar, said that the stranded had sought refuge in a temple and that they had been given sufficient food.
Also read | Downpours, flash floods in Himachal, J&K kill 22; IMD issues warning for North India
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