A Miracle @Siachen

It's nothing short of a miracle. After being buried 35 feet under snow for five long days in the forbidding glacial heights of Siachen, Lance Naik Hanumanthappa Koppad was wheeled into the intensive care unit of the Army (Research and Referral) Hospital on Tuesday .
His medical report is not too rosy , with the next 24 to 48 hours being extremely critical for the “comatose“ soldier rescued on Monday night.But everyone is praying that he turns the corner after showing grit and willpower to survive under tonnes of snow and crystallised blue ice amid temperatures between -30 and -50 degrees Celsius.
Hanumanthappa (33), named after Lord Hanuman by his family from Karnataka, clung to life when all had lost hope. He survived in an air pocket when the ice wall, a km wide and 800 m tall, fell on Sonam Post, at 19,600 ft in northern Siachen, on February 3. Hanumanthappa and his nine colleagues from the 19 Madras Regiment had no chance to escape.The bodies of his colleagues have been extricated. It's not known if Hanumanthappa clawed out an air pocket for himself as soldiers who undergo high-altitude mountain warfare training are taught to do if they get buried under avalanches or if it was sheer providence that helped create one for him.
Rescue teams of over 150 soldiers, imbued with the warrior ethos of never leaving a comrade behind, were aided by several sniffer dogs, especially two named Dot and Misha who played a stellar role in the operation.
They were also armed with specialised equipment flown in from other areas. “Army and IAF helicopters and aircraft flew over 200 sorties to rush earth-penetrating radars (which can detect metallic objects and heat signatures at 20-metre depth), radio signal detectors, deep search metal detectors, heavy ice cutters, digging and boring equipment to the area,“ said an officer. “But even if he was lucky , it requires tremendous mental robustness to survive in such conditions for over five days...I have not witnessed such a thing before,“ said a senior officer who has served in the Siachen Glacier-Saltoro Ridge region.
By the second day after the incident, the Army too was losing hope of rescuing any of the 10 trapped soldiers alive.But its specialized rescue teams with troops from 19 Madras, Ladakh Scouts and the Siachen Battle School continued to soldier on, braving the harsh terrain, poor visibility and blizzards as well as the severe limits on human endurance to undertake strenuous physical activity at those heights.
It was finally around 7.30 pm on Monday , after days of dashed hopes, that the rescue teams were able to pinpoint the spot where the 10 soldiers were buried with the help of the sniffer dogs and radars.To their surprise, while extricating the bodies, they found that Hanumanthappa still had a “weak pulse“.“He was in shock, severely dehydrated, hypothermic, hypoxic and hypoglycaemic. He was immediately resuscitated by the doctors at the post--there for the last five days in the hope of finding survivors--with warm intravenous fluids, humidified warm oxygen and passive external rewarming,“ said an officer.
Hanumanthappa was also put inside the live-saving Hapo (high-altitude pulmonary oedema) bag-like cylinder, carried by Army rescue teams in the region since it increases the atmospheric pressure around a patient to simulate descent in altitude, and an oxygen tent. “He opened his eyes around 10.30 pm, which gave us a glimmer of hope,“ said the officer.
By around 9 am on Tuesday , an Army Dhruv advanced light helicopter had winched up the unconscious soldier from the Sonam Post. He was then flown to the Siachen base camp, accompanied by a medical specialist, from where he was taken to the Partapur military hospital. He was then flown on board a C-130J Super Hercules aircraft from Thoise, which touched down in New Delhi at 10.45 am. At the Army (R and R) Hospital, a team of interventionists, neurologists, nephrologists, endocrinologists and surgeons were waiting for him.