Shabir Ahmad
A cloudburst or a night of rain can wipe out a bridge, bury a highway and isolate an entire valley before dawn. When that happens, the first organised force that can rebuild a crossing, clear a slide and reopen a road is rarely a civilian contractor. It is the Indian Army’s Corps of Engineers — the Sappers — working with the Border Roads Organisation and local administration.
Their work is unglamorous and exacting: launch a modular Bailey bridge in a gorge, cut a diversion on a cliff face, string a cableway over a drowned highway, restore a fibre line so that ambulances and ration trucks can move again. In 2025 alone, the Army deployed 141 columns, including Engineer Task Forces, at more than 80 locations across ten states. Those operations rescued 28,293 civilians, treated 7,318 people and distributed relief to thousands more.
The tool that still decides a valley’s fate
The Bailey bridge — a Second World War prefabricated steel truss that can be flown in pieces and assembled by hand — remains the Army’s most visible disaster weapon. It does not need heavy piers or long curing time. Panels, transoms and the launching nose are carried by truck or C-17, bolted together on site and rolled across a gap that would otherwise take months to span in concrete.
Recent launches show the tempo:
In landslide-hit Wayanad in July–August 2024, Madras Engineer Group troops built a 190-foot Class-24 Bailey over the Iruvanipuzha at Chooralmala in about 31–36 hours after the original concrete span was washed away, opening a route for ambulances and excavators into Mundakkai.
In Sikkim in June 2024, Trishakti Corps engineers completed a 70-foot Bailey on the Dikchu–Sanklang road in 72 hours, and had earlier thrown a 150-foot suspension span towards Chungthang.
In Jammu in August 2025, Tiger Division sappers laid a 110-foot Bailey across the damaged eastern span of Tawi Bridge No. 4 in 12 hours despite washed-out approaches and cramped working space.
In Ramban the same monsoon, White Knight engineers launched a 150-foot triple-panel, double-storey, extra-wide Bailey on the Karol–Maitra road, nearly 20 metres above the Chenab, after the stretch was scoured away. BRO, NHAI and the district administration worked the same site.
After the Dharali–Harsil cloudburst in Uttarkashi in August 2025, Army and BRO teams built a 90-foot Bailey at Limchigarh and began a 330-foot cableway over submerged stretches of the Gangotri highway while clearing four major slide points.
The same kit travels abroad. Under Operation Sagar Bandhu after Cyclone Ditwah in Sri Lanka, IAF C-17s airlifted Bailey sets and an Engineer Task Force; a 120-foot dual-carriageway span was opened in Kilinochchi in December 2025.
What happens in the first 24 hours
A typical mountain HADR column is self-contained: combat engineers, earth-moving plant, a medical detachment, signallers and, where needed, Army Aviation. The civil administration sends a requisition; the nearest formation — White Knight Corps in the Jammu hills, Chinar Corps in the Valley, Trishakti Corps in Sikkim–North Bengal, Southern Command in Kerala — moves columns that already train for flood and landslide drills.
The sequence is almost always the same. First, reconnaissance: drones, helicopters and foot parties to see whether a bridge abutment still exists, whether a slide is still moving, and whether people are trapped on the far bank. Second, immediate access: wooden footbridges, rubber boats and improvised log crossings so that a medical team can reach an isolated hamlet before any steel arrives. In flood-hit Dara Sangla in Poonch in July 2026, after an iron bridge was swept away, an Army medical team crossed a flooded stream on an improvised wooden log span to treat an injured civilian and distribute medicines. Near Khari Karmara the same week, White Knight troops and 79 Road Construction Company of BRO repaired a damaged bridge in under three hours.
Third comes the engineered fix: Bailey or Mabey-type modular spans, temporary diversions, shotcreting of cut slopes, and Road Opening Parties that work through the night with dozers and tippers. BRO’s Project Sampark in Kishtwar restored the Ghalar–Sansari axis, the only all-weather winter link for several snowbound habitations between the Chenab Valley and Himachal, in 14 hours after a Bailey collapsed under an overloaded dumper in January 2026. Later that month, the project’s 118 Road Construction Company cleared 3.5 feet of snow off 112 km of the Kishtwar–Sansari road in 72 hours.
Not only steel: water, power, signal, air
Connectivity is more than a carriageway. After the Harsil–Dharali floods, Army teams replaced damaged optical fibre between Harsil and Nelong and extended satellite internet into Dharali village so that district control rooms could talk to the ground. Air maintenance dropped more than a tonne of rations, while 33 helicopter sorties in a single day lifted 195 civilians.
In the August 2025 western Himalayan floods, 47 Army columns and 20 aircraft — ALHs, Cheetahs, Mi-17s and a Chinook — flew more than 250 hours. Signallers laid over two kilometres of optical fibre in one day to restore mobile coverage for relief coordination.
Engineers also restore drinking water with portable purification plants, shore up power poles, and, in tunnel or debris disasters (Silkyara, Giaspura), work alongside the NDRF with specialised plant. Four Sapper units received World Congress on Disaster Management DRR awards in 2024 for Wayanad, the Sikkim GLOF floods, the Silkyara tunnel collapse and other tasks.
Jammu and Kashmir: the perennial laboratory
For formations based in the Union Territory, disaster engineering is not an occasional extra. Monsoon slides on NH-44 through Ramban, flash floods in the Tawi and Chenab catchments, cloudbursts on the Machail and Kishtwar ridges, and the winter isolation of Paddar and Poonch are annual events.
In July 2026, after flash floods in Rajouri–Poonch, Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha said 356 of 435 damaged roads had been reopened, with the Army, BRO, NHAI, NDRF, SDRF and police working the same grid. Two vital bridges and strategic roads were restored by Army and BRO teams. White Knight Corps also cleared NH-144A at Jaran Wali Gali after a school wall collapsed onto parked vehicles.
In Bhaderwah, 4 Rashtriya Rifles built a wooden footbridge in under 18 hours after a cloudburst cut off Beja, Butla, Shrekhi and Katyara — a reminder that not every lifeline is a Bailey. Sometimes it is timber, rope and a night’s labour so that medicines can cross a nallah.
The Army’s own monsoon rehearsal, Exercise Hifazat: Rahat-e-Awam at Nowshera in June 2026, brought 25 Infantry Division, SDRF, NDRF and district officials onto one helipad precisely because the previous season had already shown how quickly Kishtwar, Rajouri and Poonch can lose their roads.
Why the Sappers arrive first
Civilian disaster agencies have grown. The NDRF and SDRFs now lead many urban and plains operations. In the high Himalaya, three things still favour the Army. Troops and plant are already sitting in the same valleys that flood. Combat engineers train year-round to launch bridges under fire; rain and a moving slope are a different kind of contact. And a formation headquarters can task aviation, medics and signallers in one order, without waiting for a multi-department convoy to assemble.
BRO, staffed largely by Army officers and General Reserve Engineer Force personnel, is the standing mountain road force: Road Opening Parties, avalanche detachments and bridge companies that reopen Zoji La, the Manali–Leh highway and the Kishtwar–Sansari link as a matter of seasonal routine, then switch to emergency spans when a cloudburst takes a deck.
The limit is honest. A Bailey is temporary. A cableway is a stopgap. Permanent reconstruction belongs to NHAI, PWD and BRO’s longer projects. Soldiers also die on these jobs, as in earlier Sutlej flash-flood launches, and mountain weather can ground the helicopters that make the difference between a 12-hour bridge and a week of isolation.
What the public sees, and what district magistrates keep asking for, is the interval in between: the hours when a village is cut off, the river is up, and the only organisation that can put steel across the gap before nightfall is already on the ridgeline. That is the lifeline Army Engineers still provide.
