Rescuers struggling to reach 41 construction workers trapped in a collapsed tunnel in northern India will begin drilling by hand because debris has damaged their powered equipment.
“The machine has broken. It’s irreparable. It is disrupted,” Arnold Dix, president of the International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association, told reporters at the site in India’s Uttarakhand state.
Dix added that there are “many ways” to reach the men. “I am confident that the 41 men are coming home,” he said.
AP Photo
People sit Wednesday near the site of an under-construction road tunnel that collapsed trapping 41 workers in Silkyara in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand. The workers have been trapped for over a week, as rescuers work on an alternate plan of digging toward them vertically.
A high-powered augur, or drill bit, has gotten stuck on pieces of metal mixed in with the debris, BBC News reported. The damaged machine was to be hauled away Sunday, Uttarakhand state chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami told reporters.
The workers have been trapped since a landslide caused a section of the three-mile-long Silkyara tunnel in the Indian Himalayas to cave in on Nov. 12. All the workers are safe and have been receiving oxygen, food, water, medicine and light. Doctors, psychiatrists and other personnel have been keeping their mental health on an even keel, Reuters reported.
Dense rock, stones and metal stand between the men and the outside. Rescue efforts hit their first snag on Nov. 17 after a sudden cracking sound combined with a snag in the drilling equipment halted work, Reuters reported.
Late Thursday, rescuers found the platform supporting the augur machine was unstable.
AP Photo
People wait by the site of an under-construction road tunnel that collapsed, trapping 41 workers in Silkyara in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand.
No sooner had work resumed on Friday than it had to be suspended again after the pipe that engineers were driving into the rock hit metal rods and construction vehicles that were also buried, Agence France-Presse reported.
Between 33 and 39 feet of debris still separates the workers from the outside world, say news reports.
A member of an expert panel investigating the incident told Reuters that the tunnel lacked an emergency exit and was built through a geological fault.
The tunnel is being built as part of $1.5 billion project to build a two-lane road along the Char Dham pilgrimage route. The 550-mile road will link four key Hindu pilgrimage sites, Reuters reported.
“Work is now being done to cut and clear the blockage,” Abhishek Ruhela, a senior local civil servant, told AFP on Saturday. Officials emphasized the importance of proceeding cautiously, even that extends the men’s time underground.
“Since the trapped workers on the other side of the rubble are safe and fit, not rushing has enormous value because if we rush in a situation like this, we might create problems we cannot imagine,” Dix said.
“They are in good spirits,” said Dhami, who has spoken to the men. “They said, ‘Take as many days as you require, don’t worry about us.’”
With News Wire Services
