Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Nov 17: With their lives still hanging on a thread, the operation to rescue the 40 workers trapped in the collapse of a tunnel in Uttarkashi in Uttarakhand has hit a new roadblock with some metal parts inside the rubble halting the drilling works.
Official sources said on Friday that the rescue workers worked overnight and had drilled 25 metres through the debris within a day to create the escape route for the labourers trapped inside the collapsed tunnel for over 120 hours when it hit some metal parts inside.
The rescuers need to drill up to 60 metres to insert 800 mm and 900 mm diameter pipes with the help of the giant drill machine to create the escape passage. But after 25 metres, the machine hit a metal part inside.
Anshu Manish Khalkho, Director, National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL), said efforts were being made to cut through the metal part using a gas cutter and drilling work was currently halted. Mr Khalkho said they were airlifting another machine from Indore which would will reach the site by Saturday morning.
He said pushing pipes through debris takes more time than drilling holes. “We need to make sure that there are no cracks in pipes after welding,” he said. The round-the-clock rescue work is being helmed by 165 personnel from multiple agencies, including NDRF, SDRF, BRO, and the ITBP.
Elite rescue teams from Thailand and Norway, including the one that successfully rescued the trapped children from a cave in Thailand in 2018, have joined the rescuers to aid in the ongoing rescue operation.
The trapped workers are safe and being provided oxygen, medicines, food and water through air compressed pipes, officials said. Constant communication was being maintained with them, ensuring their spirits remain unbroken and their hope alive, officials added.
An Indian Air Force C-130J Super Hercules aircraft had flew in the heavy drilling machine from Wednesday from Delhi to Chinyalisaur to bore a safe passage for the trapped workers. While the new machine was being put into service, co-workers of those trapped inside had expressed dismay and shouted slogans against multi-agency rescue teams for the slow progress in rescue operations.
“The workers need to drill up to 60 metres to insert 800 mm and 900 mm diameter pipes – one after the other — with the help of a giant drill machine till an escape passage is created for the labourers stuck behind the collapsed portion of the under-construction tunnel,” Mr Khalkho said. He said while he expected 30–35 metres of rubble to be drilled through, the exact length of the debris was hard to ascertain, as estimates so far are based on the trapped workers’ description of where they are.
Authorities plan on drilling a pipe 80cm in diameter through which workers can crawl out. As the pipe gets longer, Mr Khalkho said, it was important to maintain its structural integrity without breaking any of the joints already deep in the fallen rubble.
A portion of the tunnel, part of the ambitious Char Dham all-weather road project, collapsed on Sunday. The 30-metre collapsed section is 270 metres from the mouth of the tunnel from the Silkyara side. Mr Khalkho said it was not possible to specify a time frame for the evacuation but efforts were on to make headway at the earliest and rescue them all safely.
Tuesday’s landslip and slow performance of the drilling machine deployed earlier hampered efforts to insert steel pipes through the tunnel’s debris to create the passage, Mr Khalkho’s said.
The workers have been trapped inside the tunnel since Sunday morning when a part of the under-construction structure near Uttarkashi collapsed following a landslide. The under-construction tunnel is part of the ambitious Char Dham project, a national infrastructure initiative to enhance connectivity to the Hindu pilgrimage sites of Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri, and Yamunotri.