Seven days after the tragic landslide that occurred in the Summer Hill area of Himachal Pradesh’s Shimla district on August 14, security and disaster relief forces kept up their search efforts. With one more body found by rescue workers on Sunday, the death toll from the Monday temple collapse incident has risen to 17.
“Today is the 7th day of the search and rescue operation at Summer Hill area. So far, we have recovered 17 bodies, and we are searching for other three victims. Teams of SDRF, NDRF and Indian Army are present at the spot,” Roop Sharan, an inspector with NDRF said.
“We are putting in our best efforts & hoping to retrieve the other victims,” he added.
Virender Thakur, a local counsellor from the Summer Hill ward of Shimla Municipal Corporation said that rescue teams deployed at the site are carrying out the search operations.
“The search operations seem difficult for the teams out at the site, the machines brought over here for the rescue efforts are unable to reach down the site, so all the rescue work is being conducted manually by the rescue teams,” Thakur pointed out.
On August 14, a landslide caused the historic Shivabari temple in the Summer Hill neighborhood to collapse. As 20–21 people were reported missing following the incident, several people perished and others were trapped under the debris. As the joint team of district police, Army, Sdrf, NDRF, and fire department deployed in segments continued their search operation for the sixth consecutive day on Saturday, officials involved in the search operations had said that so far 16 bodies had been retrieved from debris.