(New Delhi) Indian rescuers began manually digging Monday in hopes of reaching 41 workers who have been trapped for more than two weeks in a collapsed mountain tunnel in the country’s north.
Kirti Panwar, a state government spokeswoman, said about a dozen men were taking turns digging through the debris with hand-held drilling tools for what was hoped would be the home stretch. They had dug almost a meter and still had up to 11 meters to go, he said.
Rescuers also began creating a vertical channel with a recently replaced drill, officials said. They drilled horizontally for a week, but the mountainous terrain proved too difficult for the machine, which broke down several times before being irreparably damaged on Friday.
The work in progress aims to create a passage to evacuate trapped workers. Rescue teams inserted pipes into the dug areas and welded them together so the men could be evacuated on wheeled stretchers.
PHOTO FRANCIS MASCARENHAS, REUTERS
Rescuers worked through the night to remove parts of the broken drill stuck inside the pipes so that manual excavation could begin, said Devendra Patwal, disaster management official at the site.
The workers have been stuck since November 12, when a landslide in Uttarakhand state caused part of the 4.5 kilometer tunnel they were building to collapse, about 200 meters from the entrance.
What was supposed to be a rescue mission of a few days turned into a delicate operation, spread over several weeks, and officials were reluctant to give a date for its completion.
The vertical excavation, which began on Sunday, required the rescue team to extract approximately 106 meters of earth and debris. The length is almost double the approximately 60 meters they needed to dig horizontally from the front of the tunnel.
PHOTO FRANCIS MASCARENHAS, REUTERS
The workers have been stuck since November 12, when a landslide in Uttarakhand state caused part of the 4.5 kilometer tunnel they were building to collapse, about 200 meters from the entrance.
Rescuers could also face risks or problems similar to those they encountered earlier that damaged the first drilling machine attempting to drill through rocks. High-intensity vibrations from drilling could also cause more debris to fall.
Mr Patwal said they were ready to face all sorts of challenges, but hoped they would not encounter strong resistance from the mountain.
“We don’t know what the drill will have to cut. It can be loose soil or rocks. But we are ready,” he said.
As the rescue operation begins its 16e Today, uncertainty about its conclusion grows. Some residents offered Hindu prayers near the tunnel.
Some officials hoped the rescue mission would be completed last week. Arnold Dix, an international expert assisting the rescue team, however, told reporters he was confident the workers would be back with their families by Christmas, suggesting they were prepared for a longer operation.
Most of the trapped workers are migrant workers from across the country. Many of their family members traveled to the site, where they camped for days to hear about the rescue efforts and in hopes of seeing their loved ones again soon.
Authorities provided hot meals to trapped workers through a 15-centimeter pipe after days of surviving only on dry food sent through a narrower pipe. They are receiving oxygen through a separate pipe and more than a dozen doctors, including psychiatrists, are on hand to monitor their health.
The tunnel that workers were building was designed as part of the Chardham all-weather road, which will connect various Hindu pilgrimage sites. Some experts say the project, a flagship initiative of the federal government, will exacerbate fragile conditions in the high Himalayas, where several towns are built on landslide debris.
Large numbers of pilgrims and tourists visit the numerous Hindu temples in Uttarakhand, with their numbers increasing over the years due to continued construction of buildings and roads.