Technical teams on July 25, have zeroed in on a possible location of Kerala driver Arjun’s truck in the Gangavali river about 60 metres away from the road. Divers will try to reach the underwater location if the weather is favourable, the district administration has said.
After continuous searching on Wednesday, July 24 and Thursday, July 25, a team of experts from the navy and Noida-based Quick Pay Private Limited have zeroed in on one location from three spots where metal was detected in the river.
Deputy Commissioner Lakshmi Priya told the media on Thursday, July 25, that navy divers had not yet been able to enter the water as the current was too strong. She said that according to experts, the current was 6 knots, which is equal to around 11km per hour. She said that humans could handle currents of around 2-3 knots which equals 3-5 km per hour. “If the weather supports, navy divers will jump in on Friday.”
Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda posted on social media that the diving team had dropped the sinker every hour after narrowing down the possible location, but it did not hold due to the strong currents, preventing them from diving.
Arjun was transporting logs in a MercedesBenz truck from Belagavi to Kozhikode in Kerala and went missing in the landslide which occurred at Shirur on July 16. A wayside tea shop and several people were buried under the debris spread across 300 metres of National Highway 66 or were swept into the water. Arjun was assumed to be trapped under the debris after company officials informed his family about his last GPS location on the road.
Rescue efforts were initially directed at finding his vehicle in the slushy mud. However, despite searching for the vehicle with radar there was no sign of a truck. Finally, by July 22, rescue workers managed to clear all the debris off the road, but there was still no sign of the truck, prompting them to look for the vehicle in the Gangavali river.
Retired Major General Indrabalan, who was aiding in the search, said that they used drones to scan the water and land. He said that there were four objects that the rescue teams suspect were swept into the river by the landslide: a portion of the guardrail of the highway, Arjun’s truck, an electric transformer, and the cabin of a tanker which had not yet been found.
Indrabalan explained that finding the location of the truck was not just about using the drones which had detected metal in three different spots. He said that they got in touch with MercedesBenz to ascertain whether the cabin of the truck could have detached from the body of the vehicle. “The company told us that this particular truck is almost like a monolith. The cabin is bolted to the body and it was more likely that the cabin broke on impact with the water than it getting separated from the body.”
He also said that the fact that the truck was carrying wooden logs would also have had an effect on the truck’s location in the water. “It was carrying around 400 logs. Logs have buoyancy, and so do the tyres. Assuming that the cabin did not break on impact, it would have some buoyancy. Due to this when the truck fell into the water, it would have been suspended in the water for a while. But we also found logs around 500 metres away which had separated from the truck, though not immediately. So the truck might have sunk after that.”
Based on the information from MercedesBenz and the RF and metal signatures from the drones, Indrabalan said that they had zeroed in on one particular spot which they think reflected the size of the truck. He said that the strongest signal of metal for this object was at a depth of five metres in a location that is 60 metres away from the road.