Trolley Across the Neelum River

The daring rescue operation in Battagram on August 22 reminds me of an incident, which I had experienced many years ago. It was October 1991 and I was posted in an NLI unit deployed along the LOC in the Neelam valley in Azad Jammu Kashmir. We were located about 200 km away from the capital city Muzaffarabad. One day in October, it rained heavily. Soon the river was in spate. The hill torrent was so strong that it swept away the wooden bridge that connected us to the tenuous mountain road linking us with our base.

This situation required immediate action. We could not just wait for help. The repair of the bridge could take months. It was quickly decided to install a local trolley system to temporarily restore our broken line of communication. A strong cable was needed to support a load of four to five people or its equivalent in stores. A cable was salvaged from the debris of the broken bridge and was manually thrown across the river, where its narrowest. Even this place was perhaps 50 feet wide. The cable was then tied securely to the remaining stone abutments of the destroyed bridge. A locally procured trolley was then hitched on to the cable. A team of soldiers was deployed to pull across the trolley. All this was done with rudimentary engineering knowledge and was based purely on human ingenuity. This makeshift arrangement was soon operational and human and cargo traffic resumed. The trolley was plied during hours of daylight.

One day the hook of the trolley broke and the human cargo of five soldiers and civilians fell down in the freezing waters of the river below. Prolonged exposure to the icy waters of the Neelam river can cause hypothermia. Luckily the passengers were good swimmers and were able to reach the banks before they were swept downstream.

The incident that took place recently was something out of Hollywood movie. It took the military aviators, the SSG commandos and volunteers on ground courage and daring to rescue the children and adults hanging in midair literally by a thread.

There are a number of ramshackle trolleys strung across the rivers in the mountainous areas of Pakistan. These are rudimentary in nature and are pulled cross manually. At times engines are used to power these trolleys. These are used by village folk to attend to normal functions like sending children to school or taking the sick to the hospital or to go the markets make purchases.

It is about time that the civilian government takes stock of the situation and carries out an audit to find out if all trolley operators are abiding by acceptable safety standards.