TUNNEL RESCUE Manual horizontal digging soon

 

 

RESCUERS had bored 36 metres into the hill above the Silkyara tunnel by Monday evening in their effort to reach 41 workers trapped inside for 15 days as rat-hole mining experts also reached the disaster site to help tackle the challenge simultaneously from another front. Twelve rat-hole mining experts will be involved in manual drilling and excavation horizontally through the last 10- or 12-metre stretch of debris of the collapsed portion of the under-construction tunnel on Uttarakhand’s Char Dham route. This drilling was earlier being carried out by a huge auger machine that got stuck in the rubble on Friday, forcing officials to focus on an alternative option -- drilling down from above the tunnel. About 40 per cent of the 86-metre vertical drilling required is now done.

 

For the horizontal through-the-rubble option, officials decided that the final stretch would be handled through a manual approach in which individual workers will go into the escape passage with drills, as well as gas-cutters to tackle obstacles like iron girders. By Monday evening, the last bit of the stuck auger had been cut out piece by piece and a steel pipe inserted further into the partially complete escape passage. With individuals already working inside the tunnel with tools like gas-cutters, officials said, “in a way” the manual operation has begun on Sunday. In Delhi, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) member Lt General (retd) Syed Ata Hasnain said vertical drilling, which began on Sunday, has already reached a depth of 36 metres. Rescuers hope to pull out workers through this one-metre-wide shaft when it breaks through the top of the tunnel below, hopefully by Thursday. Another eight-inch wide shaft being drilled from a nearby point has reached about 75 metres down.

 

The vertical drilling, however, encountered some water underground and “dewatering” was carried out, officials said. But it didn’t seriously affect the operation. Two teams of seven and five men who are experts in the technique of rat-hole mining are now at the site, called in by two private companies involved in the rescue operation. Rat-hole mining is a controversial and hazardous procedure in which miners in small groups go down narrow burrows to excavate small quantities of coal. Despite challenges, efforts on to rescue trapped workers in U’khand: PM Modi: Despite challenges from nature in the evacuation process of the 41 workers trapped inside a tunnel in Uttarakhand, the Government stands firmly to bring them out to safety, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Monday. Modi prayed for the safe evacuation of the workers who have been trapped in a tunnel in Uttarakhand for the last 15 days at a ‘Koti Deepotsavam’, a religious event of lighting lamps during the Hindu Kartika month, here.

 

He said the Government is making continuous efforts to evacuate the workers safely and as early as possible. “But, we have to complete this relief and rescue operation with lot of alertness. Nature is continuously giving us challenges in this effort. But, we are standing firm. We are making efforts round-the-clock. We have to pray for the safe evacuation of those workers and to do it as early as possible,” Modi said. The Government and all agencies together are leaving no stone unturned to bring them out safely, he said. “When we are praying to God today and talk about human welfare, then we have to pray for all those worker brothers who have been trapped inside a tunnel in Uttarakhand for the past two weeks,” he said. The family members of the workers need to be given courage that the whole country is with them, he said. He prayed that every lamp lit in the ‘Dev Diwali’ and ‘Koti Deepotsavam’ would bring light in the lives of those trapped workers at the earliest.