Uttarakhand: Rescue operations resume at Silkyara tunnel after 6-hour delay
Rescue operations to evacuate 41 workers trapped in Uttarakhand's Silkyara tunnel resumed on Thursday morning after an overnight hurdle delayed the drilling by several hours. Former advisor to the prime minister's office Bhaskar Khulbe, who was at the site, said an iron mesh which had come in the path of the drilling machine that is creating an escape path for the workers was removed in the morning.
This held up the drilling through the 57-metre stretch of the rubble of the collapsed section of the tunnel by six hours, dampening somewhat the previous evening's enthusiasm over an imminent rescue.
Removing the mesh in a claustrophobic environment inside the pipe was difficult and the problem was compounded by the lack of oxygen, Khulbe told reporters.
The workers have been trapped for 11 days after a portion of the under-construction tunnel on the Char Dham route collapsed.
At 10 am Thursday, Khulbe told reporters it would take 12 to 14 hours of drilling — which was set to resume after the metal hurdle was cleared — to insert six-metre sections of a steel pipe into the passage.
The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) will then enter the steel pipe and help bring up the trapped workers, one by one. They would lie on wheel-fitted low-height stretchers which will be pulled out of the tunnel.
This process is likely to take another three hours, Khulbe said.
They are being sent food, medicines and other essentials through a new six-inch wide tube, which is also used for communication, and a thinner tube that existed earlier.
Khulbe said the process of welding the pipes to go beyond 45 metres has been restarted. The drilling will also resume soon, he said.
