14 dead, 9 missing after dam breach in Ratnagiri

RATNAGIRI, MAHARASHTRA: Fourteen people, many of them from an extended family, were killed when a dam in Ratnagiri district’s Tivare village, 250 km from Pune, breached late on Tuesday night, resulting in a torrent washing away many houses. Nine people were still missing when rescue operations were halted for the night on Wednesday.
A massive 100-metre portion of the 308-metre-long dam was washed away, taking in its sweep nine of the 13 houses in the village and two bridges, officials said.
Villagers told TOI that the tragedy was waiting to happen, claiming they had been complaining to the authorities for at least two years about major leakages from the dam, which was built in 2014.
On Wednesday, relatives of the victims refused to take their bodies till action was taken against the officials who did not listen to their complaints. However, they relented after state water resources minister Girish Mahajan met them and assured that a proper inquiry would be conducted into their allegations.
Meanwhile, Mumbai received light showers on Wednesday — a relief after days of heavy rainfall. Firemen recovered four more bodies from the two wall collapse sites in Malad, taking the death toll in Tuesday’s tragedy to 26.
‘We’ve been complaining of dam leakages for last 2 yrs’
Maharashtra water resources minister Girish Mahajan said each family would be given Rs 5 lakh as ex gratia. “We will build temporary homes for them immediately and later permanent structures. One person from each family in the village will be given a government job,” he said.
Shrikant Bhoite, gram sevak of Tiware village, said, “For the last two years, our village has been communicating with the irrigation department about the leakages. In May this year, two or three trucks dumped mud at the site to prevent water from flowing out. We were told that the problem had been solved.”
Signs of an impending tragedy began to show on Tuesday when copious amounts of muddy water started gushing out of the earthen dam, which has a cement wall. Nagesh Shinde, the police “patil” (police informer) of the village, said they sent out an alert to police and other authorities in the morning itself. By 5pm, the dam was filled to capacity — 0.08 thousand million cubic feet of water. At 8.30pm, some villagers said the main wall of the dam had developed a breach.
Tukaram Chavan’s entire family — his wife, son, daughter-in-law and two grandsons — were washed away. Rescue teams are searching for them.
“There is no sign of my family. My life has ended,” Tukaram, who survived, said. Sandeep Pawar, whose niece was married to Tukaram’s son, had difficulty locating the family home. “There is no sign of the home,” he told TOI.
Two teams of the National Disaster Response Force are engaged in rescue operations.
On Wednesday, a few villages downstream did not even have drinking water as the wells were filled with muddy water. Even the rescue teams were fetching drinking water from a town 30 km away.
The state government has formed five teams to ensure there is no outbreak of disease in these villages.