The containers were all swept away towards Alaknanda river, said Munna Prasad from Vaishali district in Bihar.”We lay scattered under snow for around 12 hours. Snow was clogging our nostrils. It was difficult to breathe. However, thankfully the Army and ITBP teams came to our rescue before it was too late,” he said.Many workers survived by taking refuge in whatever shelter they could find—Army camps and barracks, deserted hotels.While some were rescued within hours of the avalanche on Friday, others had to spend tens of hours in the cold with next to no resources. Thirty-three of them were rescued by Friday night and 17 on Saturday.Another Bihar resident Avinash Kumar’s entire body was buried under snow, except for his head, which was bleeding and injured as he had hit an iron object during the avalanche.He was rescued by Army personnel after two hours and later sent for treatment where he received 29 stitches in the head.Chandrabhan from Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh said a milder snowslide preceded the main one which came around 5.30 am, giving them no time to prepare.”I escaped through an opening on top of the container,” he said.Vipin Kumar from Himachal Pradesh said everything happened in a flash.The Army guest house served as a shelter for many stranded labourers who spent nearly 25 hours in sub-zero temperatures, amid constant snowfall, without proper clothing, he said.Another rescued worker, Ganesh Kumar from Pithoragarh in Uttarakhand said it had snowed overnight before the avalanche hit early morning. He said he was asleep when it happened.”It was around six in the morning. I was sleeping in the container with my colleagues. Meanwhile, our container started moving with the snow and soon we found ourselves stuck in the middle of the snow,” he said.”After some time, the rescue team came and took us to the Army hospital on a stretcher,” Kumar added.Moradabad’s Vijaypal and his companions fell into a ditch more than a hundred metres deep. They saw a deserted Army barrack some 200 metres away and waded through the debris of the avalanche towards it.Due to the area’s vulnerability to avalanches, the Army does not use the barrack in winter. The barrack became a lifeline for them where they stayed for around 24 hours before being taken to safety.Vijaypal said it had been snowing for many days and on the morning of February 28, there were two avalanches near their camp.”We survived the first avalanche but after a few minutes there was another more powerful avalanche and we went down about 150 metres along with the container. On the road to Mana, at a distance of about 150-200 metres, there was an empty army camp where we spent the whole night in the empty barracks,” he said.
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