Tuesday, November 28, 2006
\nINDIAN AIR FORCE RESCUES SNOW STRANDEDMOUNTAINEERS FROM 14,000 FEET<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At 1100 hrs on 25 Nov 2006 HQ Eastern Air Command received an SOS (Save Our Souls \u2013 emergency message) from Army to locate and evacuate a team of stranded mountaineering expedition members from Yongyap La area on the Chinese border in Dibang Valley. The mountaineering team had encountered severe bad weather for five days and was stranded in a narrow valley with four to five feet of snow at approximately 14,000 feet altitude. Indian Air Force took the gauntlet immediately, by positioning 2 Cheetahs and one Mi-17 helicopter at Mohanbari for launch by afternoon of 25 Nov 2006. Even after repeated attempts, inclement weather prevented launch of rescue operations till 26 Nov 2006. The helicopters were laden with emergency food, clothing, fuel and communication sets.<\/p>\n
On 27 Nov 2006, as soon as the weather showed improvement, the valiant helicopter pilots in their flying machines got airborne. Braving low clouds and poor visibility in the narrow, treacherous valley, the pilots located the stranded mountaineers in a small clearing surrounded by tall trees and thick snow. From low hover, the helicopters pulled in the casualties into the helicopter. Faced with the chances of weather clamping down soon and the emergent requirement to evacuate the sick, the Cheetah helicopters were flown in once again ignoring subzero wind blasts, the Indian Air Force pilots once again reached the spot as Angles of Mercy. Maximizing the capability of the tiny helicopter, which normally carries only three passengers, four casualties were brought in By evacuating a total of nine casualties who were in dire straits, the helicopters facilitated the move of the rest of trekking team down the valley, equipped with the relief material dropped by the helicopters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-india-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citynews.co.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citynews.co.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citynews.co.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citynews.co.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citynews.co.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citynews.co.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citynews.co.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citynews.co.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citynews.co.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}