AMBULANCES were on standby and a special ward at a local health centre kept read as a multi-agency effort to rescue 41 men trapped in the Silkyara tunnel appeared close to success on Wednesday evening. Till 6 pm, up to 44 metres of an escape pipe had been inserted into the debris of the collapsed stretch of the tunnel in Uttarakhand’s Uttarkashi district, an official update said in Delhi. Earlier, officials said the American-made auger machine had to drill through a 57 metre stretch of debris to reach the workers, who were trapped when a portion of the under-construction tunnel collapsed 10 days back. By this count, just 13 metres of debris remained to be drilled through. Drilling from the Silkyaraend was put on hold Friday afternoon when the auger machine encountered a hard obstaclearoundthe22-metre mark, creating vibrations in the tunnel that caused safety concerns.

 

The drilling resumed around midnight Tuesday. As the machine drills through, six metre sections of steel pipes, just under a metre wide, are pushed into theescapepassage.Oncethe pipeway reaches the other end,the trappedworkers are expected to crawl out. A National Disaster Response Force(NDRF)team wasspottedenteringthetunnel in the evening. A team of 15 doctors, including chest specialists, hasbeendeployed at the site in anticipation of the evacuation. Twelve ambulances were on standby at the spot, and the plan was to keep a fleet of 40 ready. A helicopter was also expectedtobeearmarkedfor the operation. Aspecialward to accommodate all evacuated workers was readied at the community health centre in Chinyalisaur. All hospitals in the district as well as AIIMS, Rishikesh are on alert, officials said. Relatives of workers who have spoken to them through a new six-inch pipeline inserted late Monday through the rubble expressed optimism. At a media briefing in Silkyara around 4 pm, Bhaskar Khulbe,aformer advisor with the Prime Minister’sOffice,wasupbeat, saying that another six-metre section of the rescuepipe had been inserted over the past hour. “Hopefully the next twothree hours will be comfortable in terms of assembling forthe next push and attaining what all of us are waiting for,” he said. Officials had said earlier that the stretch between 40 and 50 metres was the “most crucial” one.

 

Asked to spell out a timeline for workers’ evacuation, Khulbe had said, “We hope to celebrate Bagwal with them”,possibly meaning I gas, a festival celebrated in the Garhwal region after Diwali. This year Igas will be celebrated on Thursday. Several alternative plans are also in motion if the horizontal drilling from the Silkyara end fails. Officials said about nine metres of horizontal drilling had taken place from the Barkot end of the tunnel - a much longer process that could take several days. Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami once again on Wednesday morning for updates on the rescue operation. First visualsofthe trapped workers were captured early Tuesday with the help of an endoscopic camera sent through the new six-inch pipeline. In a statement, the Government saidthesecond lifeline was functioning efficiently, ensuring an ample supply of food items like rotis, sabzi, khichdi, daliya, oranges, and bananas in the tunnel.