Nepali Army In Campaign Of Opening Damaged Roads

Kathmandu, Oct 8: The Nepali Army has launched a campaign of re-operating the damaged roads after repairing them.

Six thousand army personnel are mobilized for repairing the highways, the strategically-important RCC bridges and rural roads damaged due to the flooding and landslides triggered by incessant rains on September 27 and 28, said Nepali Army spokesman, Brigadier General Gaurav Kumar KC.

The army had made preparation to assign 14,000 personnel in the disaster response in the wake of the weather forecast of the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology.

The Army spokesman said that the Army immediately swung into action in the search and rescue in the disaster-hit districts as Kathmandu, Lalitpur, Bhaktapur, Kavrepalanchwok, Sindhupalchwok, Makawanpur, Sindhuli, Ramechhap and Panchthar.

The Army personnel including the engineers are mobilized to operate transport by repairing and reconstructing the BP highway, the Araniko highway, the Mid-Hills highway, Tribhuvan highway and Prithvi highway, the rural roads and the RCC bridges connecting two districts.

"As the primary responsibility the Army is engaged in installing a Bailey bridge over the Sunkoshi river at Khurkot and the Army engineers are assisting the Department of Roads team with the detailed study of the damaged road sections of the BP highway at different places under the Roshi Khola Corridor," Brigadier General KC said.

Traffic on the Kanti highway has been resumed since Monday evening by removing the landslide debris at various places along the highway.

"The Organization has been mobilizing its workforce in the reconstruction and rehabilitation after determining the priorities with the conclusion of the search, rescue and relief works in the first phase," the Army spokesperson KC said.

The Disaster Management Directorate under the command of a Brigadier General and two battalions- one based at Sundarijal of Kathmandu and next one based at Chitwan- are actively working within the Nepali Army for disaster management.

The stakeholders concerned have pointed out to the need of a new strategy to making the disaster preparedness and response more effective, learning from the shortcomings in disaster response and the scale of damage resulting from this year's flooding and landslides.