DEHRADUN: By June 20, three days after flash floods wreaked havoc in the high valleys of Uttarakhand, it had become clear to the Indian Air Force that the mission ahead of them is going to be unprecedented in scale. While they had deployed eight helicopters in the first two days, the picture of devastation and the estimates of stranded survivors they brought back immediately prompted mobilization of more choppers from air force stations nearby. 

The combination of bad weather and narrow valleys sandwiched between steep mountains posed a major challenge to the pilots. There was no air traffic control and little by way of navigational aid. There was no radar to provide real-time cloud and weather information. It was flying entirely by sight and visibility was poor. If you ran into dense fog while weaving your way through a narrow valley in high altitude, it could prove deadly. 

The Air Force considered deploying flying radars, or AEWACs (Airborne Early Warning and Control), but the mountain terrain meant that most valleys would fall in a blindspot. Then they found a workaround. A Hercules C130 J would take off from the Hindon Air Base at the crack of dawn, fly high up in the skies over Uttarakhand, make detailed observations on cloud patterns and report to the operations command centre at the Jollygrant airport in Dehradun. This information would then be used to decide the schedule and direction of rescue sorties. The IAF called this aircraft the Weather Bird. 

But as the Weather Bird brought some visibility to the weather, another problem cropped up. As Dehradun's air space became cluttered with choppers of various agencies, Uttarakhand started running out of Aviation Turbine Fuel. "We figured we would have to arrange for our own fuel. But there was no airfield in the affected areas that could land a tanker," said Air Vice Marshal S.R.K. Nair, who headed up the IAF mission out of Dehradun. 

The IAF once again fell back on the C130 J, a medium lift turbo prop aircraft made by Lockheed Martin that was inducted into the IAF fleet in 2011 through a Foreign Military Sale deal with the United States. A Google Maps search for large clear spaces to build makeshift helipads revealed two air strips in the upper reaches--in Dharasu and Gaucher. These were being used for landing helicopters and small aircraft by the civilian administration. But there was no air traffic control. There were several breaches on the boundary wall and cattle would stray into the runway. 

Amazingly, in the confusion of the early days when multiple agencies started work on the ground and coordination was poor, nobody informed the IAF that these airstrips could be used. 

First the IAF airlifted two fuelling bowsers from Chandigarh in Mi 26, a massive Russia-made chopper. Then it cleared the airfield and prepared for the C130 J to land.A C130 J pilot was first transported by helicopter to the Dharasu airstrip. Between directions given by him on the ground and guidance by the Weather Bird that hovered high in the sky, a super hercules with fuel tanks filled to the brim landed in Dharasu on 22 June. The bowsers sucked the fuel out of its large tanks and refuelled the choppers. The large aircraft made multiple landings in the same airstrip in subsequent days with fuel and supplies and flew back to Hindon with rescued pilgrims. 

"Every disaster is different. We follow our standard operation procedure. But in such situations, we have to plan, innovate, improvise and think out of the box," Nair said. He reported to the Air Headquarters in Delhi from where the Air Chief Marshal and other senior officers monitored and planned the operations. Nair reckons that this was possibly the largest helicopter evacuation operation in history. As the last pilgrims were flown out of Badrinath on Tuesday, more than two weeks after the flash floods, the IAF alone has flown out more than 19,000 stranded and injured pilgrims. More than 120 pilots flew 45 choppers, clocking more than 1,000 hours of flying. With little by way of air traffic control and with choppers of various agencies in a crowded airspace, pilots just had to follow the rules of the air and get around by talking to each other. While flying in a valley, choppers the world over fly as close as possible to the river and keeps to its right. Such norms helped keep the skies safe in Uttarakhand.

Source: The Economic Times, DT. July 4, 2013.