A column of 202 Engineer was deployed for rescue operations in the worst-affected Madhepura district in north Bihar. Against impossible odds, the sappers worked round the clock, operating from a camp on the road between Saharsa town and Madhepura’s district headquarters, now inundated with nearly five feet of water. The army engineers would begin their day at 4 am, ready the boats, load them on to tractors and then head for the point where the land met the swirling waters.
The column of 100 men is equipped with 10 aluminium boats and is led by two officers, complemented by a team of army doctors and paramedics with emergency medicine. Working for nearly ten hours a day, they get into a constant cycle of taking the boats out, picking up survivors, heading back to dry land, and then heading out again in the blistering sun.
All army columns deployed in rescue operations have been following this punishing schedule. As boats go out to the flooded villages, submerged electricity poles sometimes punched holes in the boats, which would be brought back and quickly repaired using handkerchiefs and M-seal.
They are always racing against time. When they receive an alert, they begin a desperate search for people trapped for days without food or fresh water. Fighting currents that threaten to overpower the motorboats, soldiers often jump into the water to push the boats.
When the day’s rescue operations are called off, stocktaking reveals that just four boats working non-stop for five hours have rescued 253 people, including 100 children. On one memorable day they managed to rescue nearly 200 children, some as young as six months old, trapped on the roof of the Durga Ma High School in Jodgaon village. It was just another day in the lives of these men, who work without reward or recognition.
