The rescue of 41 workers trapped for 12 days in a tunnel in northern India is interrupted

Rescue teams temporarily interrupted drilling work to rescue 41 workers who were trapped twelve days ago in a tunnel under construction in northern India, after the tunnel boring machine suffered technical problems during the final phase of the operation.

“We have had to pause operation of the machine at this time and some repairs are being carried out. “We will probably enter the next phase in which we will consider other options,” one of the international experts in charge of the rescue, Arnold Dix, told the Indian agency PTI.

This new obstacle casts cold water on the hopes of the authorities, who this morning reported that the operation had entered its final phase and were confident that the rescue would be completed this Thursday.

The workers were trapped in the early hours of November 12 when a section of a tunnel under construction collapsed in the town of Silkyara, in the northern state of Uttarakhand, causing a blanket of debris nearly 60 meters thick.

The rescue plan consists of creating a cavity in the rubble wall large enough to insert a pipe almost a meter in diameter through which the workers can exit.

As space is opened with tunnel boring machines, lengths of pipe of about six meters each are introduced, while expert welders join each end.

Alternative plans

However, the authorities have prepared five alternative plans to reach the workers, which include excavating a vertical tunnel from the top of the mountain that reaches the area where they are located or drilling a rescue tunnel of about 483 meters long from the other side of the mountain.

This was stated this Thursday by Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain, of the National Disaster Management Authority of India, during a press conference in which he assured that “a five-pronged approach is being adopted” and added that workers ” “They are safe and are in a two-kilometer-long stretch inside the tunnel.”

A makeshift hospital with 41 beds, doctors, aid teams, 41 ambulances and helicopters wait outside the tunnel, while rescue teams discuss how they will get the workers out once they reach them.

Director of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), Atul Karwal, informed the media that once the last pipeline is installed, the NDRF personnel will slide to the area where the workers are trapped and will pull them out one by one. to one by using stretchers pulled by a rope from the other end of the pipe.

This operation will not, however, be immediate, since the twelve days they have spent trapped in the tunnel, with limited supplies of water and food that the rescuers sent them through a narrow pipe, have weakened them and will require a progressive adaptation to the conditions outside.

This pipe, which was already present before the accident, also serves to supply them with oxygen, while the rescue teams remain in contact with the workers from the day of the collapse using walkie-talkies.

More obstacles

This is not the first time that the rescue has suffered complications. The operators had to stop the operation last night after a metal object obstructed the movement of the pipes, preventing them from being inserted.

They were also forced to replace the machinery last week due to multiple breakdowns and to replace it with the current tunnel boring machine, with greater power.