A phenomenon in public service, the Sappers of the Indian Army have been the country's hope when devastation hits
OUR INADEQUACIES in recounting the feats of outstanding dedication and verve of the Corps of Engineers of the Indian Army in providing succour to the people in distress and peril are more than made up by our public consciousness. Seven teams from this Corps had participated in the rescue effort in the recent floods in Chennai. Sappers, as they are historically known, have always been omnipresent key players in all rescue and relief activities and have set a benchmark for service to our nation. “The sands of time bear testimony to the innumerable and vast array of indomitable tasks undertaken by the Sappers ranging from construction of dams, roads, jetties and infrastructure to helping in healing the scars of death and destruction in disasters” wrote an eulogy to this entity.
Without their helping hands during the cyclone of Orissa in 1999, the earthquake of Bhuj in 2001, the devastation wreaked by the Tsunami in 2004, and the most recent earthquake of 2005 in Jammu and Kashmir, these natural disasters would have been cataclysmic. The Sappers have been the saviours in the shared beliefs in our nation’s history. To term their contribution simplistically as disaster mitigation, therefore, is an act in abject humility.
With a measure of intense nostalgia, one read, in August 1959, of the perilous collapse of the diversion tunnel and flooding of the chamber, galleries and the power house with the waters of the Gobind Sagar reservoir at the nation’s showpiece, the iconic Bhakra dam. The occurrence had threatened the very existence of the dam itself, when the Sappers led by Lt Col PLN Choudary launched “Operation Madhuri” to save the project and countless lives. In a dayand-night incessant endeavour, which lasted for nearly four months, they had transported thousands of 20 tons concrete blocks on Bailey rafts to release them at selected points and block the tunnel finally.
The Indian Sappers were an infant force then. Within two years in 1961, they handled two calamities again in Maharashtra. First, when the Panshet dam burst with the water destroying everything in its wake, and the second, when the Khadakvasla Dam burst and flooded the city of Pune. Working relentlessly, the Sappers pulled down unsafe buildings, cleared mounds of debris and constructed temporary shelters. In 1978, with the weakening of the Lakshya dam at Kudremukh iron-ore project site in Karnataka, the Sapper’s team braved strong water currents to build a revetment. This scant concern for their personal safety was seen again in saving the industrial township of Morvi from being turned into a submerged morgue, in 1979.
Earthquakes have their own tragic stories to tell, one of which is the poignant narrative of the 1950 quake of Richter (R) 8.7 magnitude in Assam faced by the newly-born independent Indian state. Earth convulsions had caused the river to gush above the embankments and the region’s topography had altered shape. An awesome human toll was predicted and the Sappers had spearheaded with an army rescue team to ameliorate people’s adversity and misfortune.
They were again at the forefront to save life and property in 1967, when Koyna in Maharashtra was struck by a R-7.5 magnitude quake threatening the Koyna dam. This time, they not only straightened the precariously looming hoist tower but pitched in with the local police to maintain order in the town in the midst of chaos. In1988, they saved Darbhanga in Bihar from utter ruin from the aftermath of a quake, which engulfed the whole state. The performance by the nine columns of Sappers for quake relief operations to Latur in Maharashtra in 1993 is still quite distinct in the memories of the citizenry. The saviours were deployed the very day when the horrendous calamity hit the regions of Latur and Osmanabad and claimed nearly 8,000 lives and injured16,000 people.
In the historicity of rising statistics, it would seem the nation was to receive a service of the most exceptional order from the Sappers in the ensuing years. We recall the 1999 quake in Garhwal, after which, amongst many of their successes was restoring a six lakh litres of everyday water supply to the towns of Chamoli and Gopeshwar.
The R-7.9 magnitude quake to hit Bhuj, Gujarat in 2001, is deemed as the second strongest seismic calamity to afflict the nation. Nearly 20,000 people perished and 2,00,000 were injured. About 3,000 people died in the city of Bhuj alone. The ferocity of the tectonic upheaval left an impact over an area of nearly 40,000 sq km.
The all-out rescue war launched by the Sappers was spread over a wide front. A field company moved even without a former requisition from the state administration and pulled out 57 people buried alive. Two Sapper regiments deployed in Bachchau and Anjar were the calming influence for the panic-stricken populace during tremors that persisted for a month. Two more regiments were rushed to the region in late January and for the first time, they conducted controlled demolition of unsafe multi-storied buildings to avert further danger
The challenges of 2005 earthquake with its epicenter in PoK, similar in magnitude to the Gujarat quake, was treated with sensitivity, in expeditiously refurbishing long closed border points for passage of relief supplies. A chronicle recording the feats of the Sappers battling the floods would be immense and spread over national space and time. Back in 1957, they had subverted the fury of the River Yamuna to guarantee that the taps in the capital city of Delhi did not run dry; an effort that lasted through the night. In the same year, in one of the most risky conditions, Lance Naik Renugopal worsted the onslaught of the River Poonch’s rapidly rising waters and enabled the launch of a 600-feet cableway. The people called it “Madras Mail”. The President honoured Renugopal with the award of Ashok Chakra Class III. During Operation Bandhan in 1958, in flood conditions, the Sappers launched a Bailey Bridge in just 28 hours to provide continuity in a gap in the BombayGoa highway. The fury of the Mahanadi River was tamed by them in Orissa in 1961, and an inland water transport company deployed to rescue marooned people.
In 1963, they were in Mainpuri, UP. In 1969-70 they were in West Bengal. In 1972 they saved tourists in Bharatpur, UP. And in 1973, they battled the floods in Samastipur, Bihar to lose in death, Sapper Bhola Prasad Singh, whilst attempting to protect people from getting electrocuted. He was bestowed with a Shaurya Chakra posthumously. The cities of Patna and Ujjain were saved in 1975 in separate actions. In 1976, the Sappers saved Keravali and Kheragarh Tehsils in UP, the town of Silchar in Assam, and eventually went on to provide communication links for movement of vehicles in the cyclone affected Tamil Nadu coast. Their regiments received three Vishisht Seva medals for these feats.
These are only a few stories to tell and to recall that since then Sapper regiments have been called out at least on 31 separate occasions to ameliorate emergency flood conditions. The recent 2004 tsunami evoked a transnational response when we saw them provide succour to the affected civilians not just in India but also in Sri Lanka and the Maldives. The Sappers have been a phenomenon in public service.