Velachery rescue: Why it took over 100 hours to secure the bodies

CHENNAI: Dozens of personnel, including trained rescue swimmers, drawn from various State and central forces. Specialised machinery and equipment. Sniffer dogs. The challenging operation to search for the two persons who went missing after falling into the 60-foot pit in Velachery on Monday, when Cyclone Michaung was unleashing its fury, concluded on Friday after long and taxing 100 hours when their bodies were lifted out.

Few, if any, believed in the miraculous rescue of Naresh and Jayaseelan. But for their anxious families, like Jayaseelan’s pregnant wife Manju, who stayed put on Five Furlong Road the entire five days hoping against hope that her husband would be rescued, it did indeed bring closure.

In the initial period, the government machinery did not put in the full effort initially to rescue the men. It could perhaps be because the rescue personnel were spread thin across the city, but that did little to soothe the kin of the deceased who did not hide their righteous anger at the government.

"We don’t even know if we would get the body to perform the last rites," a relative of Naresh had told DT Next on Wednesday. By then, three days had gone by since they fell inside. But he was immediately chided by an elderly man who heard the desperate comment. "Do not refer to them as dead."

Even after the rescue efforts went all-in from Wednesday evening, it took more than 30 hours to secure the bodies, as there were challenges at every stage, said rescue personnel.

More than 75 personnel from Tamil Nadu Fire and Rescue Services (TNFRS), including swimmers, along with National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) personnel have been working round the clock. Even after Larsen and Toubro (L&T) bolstered the dewatering operations, pumping out more than 50 feet of water from the pond-sized trench since Wednesday night, the last stage proved to be a struggle despite using high-end machines.

Explaining what lay ahead while speaking to the media on Thursday evening, TNFRS director DGP Abhash Kumar said that after the dewatering using high-capacity pumps, there was about eight feet of water mixed with slush and debris, which made it a challenge to deploy rescuers.

Velachery Rescue: The location of one of the bodies was identified on late Thursday night and the body was eventually retrieved during the early hours of Friday.#Velachery #Velacheryrescue #ChennaiPolice #Chennai pic.twitter.com/azbTDRDxpc

— DT Next (@dt_next) December 9, 2023

"There was spring water and a lot of debris, too, above the place where we suspected Naresh’s body was. By Thursday night itself, our rescuers had sensed the smell of a decomposed body. We then used gas cutters to clear the debris and managed to secure his body during the early hours of Friday," said an official part of the rescue team.

It took seven more hours to recover Jayaseelan's decomposed body, as there was more debris and slush above where the rescuers thought he was. He was initially assumed to be inside a container that fell in the pit. But after the rescue teams managed to spot the container and cut it open, there was nobody inside, a top official with TNFRS confirmed to DT Next. They continued looking through the slush.

"Our sniffer dogs, too, marked the area, but the situation was such that we had to use earthmovers to move the slush to continue the search," a fire service officer added.

Therein lay the next challenge, as the earthmover had to be dropped into the 60-foot pit, which required telescopic cranes that are capable of lifting such heavy machinery. Not usually used by government departments or small private contractors, the crane had to be brought from a site in East Coast Road (ECR), which delayed the slush removal. Till then, the workers were moving the slush and debris manually, the fire officer said.

The all-terrain telescopic crane dropped the earthmovers into the pit, after which the slush and debris were removed. That was when the rescuers eventually found Jayaseelan's body. The bodies were put in a body bag and lifted off in an emergency rescue man basket to be taken for autopsy.

During his visit to the site a few hours before Jayaseelan's body was secured, Greater Chennai Corporation Commissioner J Radhakrishnan said the government spared no efforts in the rescue and promised due compensation for the families of the victims.

When asked about the site being cordoned off with a safety net, which led to allegations that there was no transparency, he said it was according to disaster management guidelines, as the bodies were expected to be in a severely decomposed state after so many days.

“Even after the net was erected, the victims’ families have been allowed inside and were constantly updated on the progress," the Commissioner said.

Meanwhile, even after securing the bodies of the two missing persons on Friday, the rescue teams continued combing the construction site to check if there was anyone else stuck inside.

"The rescue efforts should ring alarm bells for big construction firms to be considerate of their employees, and not make them work in unfavourable weather conditions," said a senior officer with Tamil Nadu Fire and Rescue Services (TNFRS). It had to cost two young lives to bring focus on the grim reality of widespread insensitivity in the sector.