The 41 workers who are trapped under a collapsed tunnel in Uttarakhand for 13 days will be pulled out on wheeled stretchers one by one through a big pipe that is being pushed through the rubble to reach them, officials have said.
The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) today released a video to demonstrate the use of stretchers to pull out the trapped workers. The video shows an NDRF official going through the passage, pushing a wheeled stretcher tied to a rope at the end of the tunnel. He was then pulled back after completing the stretch.

Every worker will be made to lie low on the stretcher to prevent their limbs from scrapping the welded pipe's metal underside while NDRF personnel pull the stretcher with a rope, officials said.

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The rescuers had also considered the option of making the workers crawl out one by one. Their health condition, however, may prevent them from crawling out on their own, following 13 days of living under the debris of the tunnel without any natural light and full meals, though they have been given supplies via small "lifeline" pipes.

Rescue efforts for the 41 workers trapped in Uttarakhand's Silkyara tunnel have entered the final stretch. Workers trapped in a tunnel in Uttarakhand were seen for the first time on Tuesday as a camera inserted through a pipe captured their visuals.

An endoscopic flexi camera was pushed inside the tunnel through a six-inch pipe inserted through the rubble last night to send food for the 41 workers trapped since a portion of the tunnel caved in on November 12.

In the visuals, the labourers were seen in their hard hats and work gear, waving to the camera, communicating that they are coping well, given their trying circumstances.

The drilling resumed today after the rescue operation was briefly halted late last evening because of a mechanical glitch. Officials said the rescuers have managed to drill the rubble up to 48 metres and another 10 metres remain to be covered to allow the trapped labourers to be evacuated.

Over the past week, repeated attempts to rescue the workers have failed because of challenges including the topography and the nature of rocks in the area. The efforts were complicated by falling debris and landslides last week.

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Officials said that all workers are safe and are being supplied food and water through steel pipes that have been drilled into the opening.     

The round-the-clock rescue work is being carried out by multiple agencies, including NDRF, SDRF, BRO, and the ITBP. An international tunnelling expert team, and a robotics team from defence research organization DRDO are also present at the site.

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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.
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Excavators began drilling with heavy machinery on Tuesday to fix a wide steel pipe that will help pull out almost 40 workers trapped inside a collapsed Himalayan highway tunnel that caved in two days ago in the north Indian state of Uttarakhand.

Excavators began drilling with heavy machinery on Tuesday to fix a wide steel pipe that will help pull out almost 40 workers trapped inside a collapsed Himalayan highway tunnel that caved in two days ago in the north Indian state of Uttarakhand.

The tunnel, which was being built on a national highway that is part of a Hindu pilgrimage route, caved in around 5:30 a.m. on Sunday.

"We have been supplying food, water and oxygen to the trapped labourers and the officials are in continuous touch with all of them," Devendra Singh Patwal, a disaster management official said.

Excavators have been removing debris for two days to carve out a path to reach the workers and had been awaiting delivery of a wide steel pipe which will be pushed into an opening of excavated debris to safely pull out the workers.

Patwal said it was not easy to ascertain the time required to pull out the workers.

A team of geologists from the state government and educational institutions had arrived to determine the cause of accident, he added.

The region is prone to landslides, earthquakes and floods and the incident follows events of land subsidence in the state that geologists, residents and officials have blamed on rapid construction in the mountains.

The work on the tunnel stretch commenced in 2018 and was initially intended to be completed by July 2022, which has now been delayed to May 2024, an Indian government statement said.

The Char Dham pilgrimage route is one of the most ambitious projects of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government. It aims to connect four important Hindu pilgrimage sites of North India through 889 km (551 miles) of two-lane road being built at a cost of $1.5 billion.

But some work has been halted by local authorities after hundreds of houses were damaged by subsidence along the routes, including in Uttarakhand.

(REUTERS)

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