Search teams recovered bodies of four more victims of the Mahad bridge collapse from the Savitri river in Maharashtra’s Raigad district on Saturday, taking the death toll to 24.
Four days of combing operations have failed to yield the wreckage of the two missing State transport buses and private vehicles, including a Tavera SUV, which plunged into the flooded Savitri river on Tuesday night, after the bridge collapsed.
One of the bodies was identified as that of Dinesh Kambli, who was travelling in the Tavera SUV. His body was recovered from Mhapral, a few kilometres from the site of the bridge collapse disaster.
Still no vehicles found
National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) authorities and district officials camped at Mahad refuted reports that parts of the SUV and the buses have been found near the accident spot: “We have no conclusive evidence of any such find,” Anupam Srivastava, Commandant, NDRF, 5th Battalion, told The Hindu .
Using sonar
Mr. Srivastava further said that in a bid to intensify the search, NDRF boats were being equipped with eco-sound sensor cameras which would give the image of the riverbed. “We are actively deploying sonar technology to trace the debris of the missing vehicles. A major obstacle is that the riverbed is strewn with boulders and big stones, making detection of metal wreck difficult,” he said.
Most of the NDRF boats had chosen local fishermen as guides as they were well-versed with the nature of the river and the depressions on the river bed, Mr. Srivastava said. As many as 160 jawans from four teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), aided by local fishermen, are battling relentless rain and rising river water levels in a desperate search for the missing. Authorities have said that at least 42 persons, among them passengers and crew members of two transport buses, and a number of private cars are feared to have been washed away into the Arabian Sea.
