Punjab: Authorities airlifted at least 25 people and delivered 400 food packets to remote ‘us-paar’ villages – seven hamlets sandwiched between enemy Pakistan and the raging Ravi river. Before the relief material arrived on Wednesday, nearly 3,500 residents of the villages had to wait for nearly four days for food and drinking water. They have been spending days without electricity as the nearby power grid has failed. Almost all residents had moved to the roofs of their houses as the river overflowed its banks and flooded their fields and homes, forcing residents to tie up their cattle and independently find a way to move to a safer place.
What makes rescue operations difficult is the inundation of connecting roads. The Public Works Department (PWD) has built an 800-metre-long pontoon bridge over the Ravi river, but the bridge breaks during the monsoon. A wobbly boat is then used to ferry them across the river. However, like every year, this time too it was called off when difficulties arose. When a helicopter carrying rations reached them on Wednesday, they decided among themselves that the occasion would be used to airlift the sick, old and weak people to a safer place by helicopter.
When the floodwaters entered their homes and fields, they had made a distress call to Deputy Commissioner (DC) Dalwinderjit Singh on Tuesday. They were lucky to get a chance to contact the bureaucrat as mobile phones were not working most of the time due to network problems. The DC contacted the Army Aviation Corps and sent a helicopter loaded with rations, drinking water bottles and other essential items. Pathankot DC Aditya Uppal also swung into action. A part of this cluster of villages falls in his district. He asked the officials to send ration kits and life saving medicines in a helicopter to Lassiyan village.
