Uttarakhand floods: BSNL to fix mobile towers in 3 days

New Delhi: State-run telecom firm BSNL on Friday said it will restore within three days its mobile towers at places where most of the stranded people are located in flood-hit Uttarakhand.

"Our 270 BTS (mobile towers) were down till last evening across state. Out of these, we have restored 10 BTS at crucial locations where most of stranded people are located. In next three days most of the BTS will be up and running," said BSNL Chairman and Managing Director R K Upadhyay.

He added that BSNL has restored 10 telephone exchanges out of 72 that were impacted by heavy rains and floods. "The absence of a usable road network has prevented access to the affected areas for movement of the technical teams.

Additionally, the lack of electricity means diesel needs to be supplied to the sites on an urgent basis to restart the affected sites and keep the operational ones running," industry body COAI's Director General Rajan S Mathews said.

"The fuel stations located in the high altitude regions have been damaged and are running dry, while the unusable roads are preventing the supply of diesel to the affected sites from other places," he added. BSNL said it has restored network at Janki Chatti, Barkot and Phata where most of the people are stuck.

As per official estimates, around 50,000 people are stranded at various locations in Uttarakhand. Mathews said bigger issue is of power supply which is impacting the telecom sites that were working.

"Special requests have been made to state authorities to make diesel available for mobile tower sites. All the headquarter of telecom companies are closely monitoring situation," he added.

BSNL said its mobile tower at Harsil is facing power crisis due to fault in power plant and shortage of diesel.

Helpline numbers:

Uttarkashi: 01374-226126, 226161

Chamoli: 01372-251437

Tehri: 01376-233433

Rudraprayag: 01732-1077

The ITBP helpline and control room numbers: 011-24362892, 9968383478

Army medical emergency helpline numbers: 18001805558, 18004190282, 8009833388

Uttarakhand Helpline numbers: 0135-2710334, 2710335, 2710233

Railway helpline numbers at Haridwar: 09760534054/09760534055;

Dehradun: 01352622131;

Rishikesh: 01352434167

####[View the story ”Uttarakhand floods: These people are missing. Can you help?” on Storify]