Some eight lives were confirmed to have been lost, two vital bridges were washed away, and the road topography was destroyed completely. The route coming into it from Tezpur had been closed off by 32 landslides in all. The road leading out from Tenga had been wrecked and rendered unchartable by a brutal two-point cut made where the  river had completely washed the road and its foundation away, merging into the rock face. Tenga had been turned into an ‘island’. This was the worst disaster in the past 26 years in this region.

The job of ending Tenga’s isolation once again fell upon the Border Roads Organisation. 

A similar, though clearly less violent mishap had taken place in Tenga some four months ago, when the Chugh bridge connecting Tenga to Rupa was washed away by a flash-flood. Though the medium of destruction was the same, the extent of carnage, the intensity of intervention required and the constraints being worked under were far greater this time round. Nonetheless, work began immediately in full earnest. 

A detailed plan was chalked out and it was understood that a grueling work schedule needed to be drawn up. Work at the site begins at 4AM in the morning and continues under floodlights till midnight. The seat of operations has been turned almost into a battle station, with onsite first-aid facilities, a makeshift cookhouse and resting stations having been set up. The quarantining effect of roadblocks on both sides meant that movement of equipment and manpower was all but impossible, so the workforce on hand operates in shifts and available machinery is being wrung out completely. To overcome the inevitable breakdowns when work of such a scale is undertaken with such intensity, engineers and mechanics are constantly at work doing onsite repairs, functioning together as an on-ground workshop. 

At times the task seems almost too big a demand. Perpetual landslide points have emerged at many places, and it is often tough to fight back dismay when backbreaking work just put in is once again crushed under a fresh landslide. Massive boulders and piles of rubble sit with such authority at the site of the two-point cut that it is almost difficult to conceive that a road ever existed there. 

Yet with its characteristic doggedness, the BRO soldiers on. The vigor with which the job is being done is though bearing fruit. In just four days, work is almost 40% complete. Tenga’s isolation shall not last much longer. Col G Muthukumar, SM is the Commander of BRO’s number 14 Task Force, executing this task under Shri. Mahindrakar, VSM, Chief Engineer, Project, Vartak, Headquartered at Tezpur.