Bilaspur Landslide Horror: 16 Dead, Two Survivors as Negligence Buries Bus Near Bhallu Bridge. He'll broke loose on a family who lost its four members.
Bilaspur, Oct — A bus carrying 18 passengers was buried under a massive landslide near Bhallu Bridge in Berthi, the rainiest belt of Bilaspur district, late Tuesday evening.
Sixteen people, including four members of a family, the driver and conductor, were killed while only two children survived, rescued from the mangled remains after an all-night operation by NDRF and local teams.
There was a pall of gloom and Doom in the family but also the entire village in Berthi when four dead bodies arrived home from the wreckage site.
What makes this tragedy even more painful is that it was completely preventable.
Locals say the PWD, NHAI and the road contractors failed to erect warning signs at the landslide-prone spot despite two days of incessant rainfall.
The bus was still allowed to ply in late evening hours through a known danger zone.
Families are shattered, villages are in mourning, and questions are now flying thick:
Why was the bus permitted to travel at night on a rain-battered hillside? Why were there no slope warnings or traffic restrictions?
And why did the district disaster management authority not issue an alert when the area had been sliding for days?
Officials have identified all the deceased — including Sanjeev, Vimla, Kanta Devi, Kamlesh, Praveen, Bakshi Ram, Sharif Khan, Anjana, Krishan Lal and Narender Sharma — whose bodies were recovered from the debris. Survivors Arushi and Shaurya are under treatment and out of danger.
This chilling mishap has once again exposed the cracks in Himachal’s road safety and disaster preparedness.
A wake-up call for agencies that act only after lives are lost.
Transport department and HRTC and Private operators have no safety SOP for running their buses mainly during rainy days and where the roads are under construction.
The disaster management and NHAI, PWD and Transport department need to be taken to task as innocent lives are lost in these preventable natural disaster.
CM Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu has announced a Rs 4 lakh Compensation to the extraordinary of kin of the members perished in the landslide.
#BilaspurTragedy #HimachalLandslide #NegligenceKills #AccountabilityNow
