Uttarkashi tunnel rescue: authorities plan to drill from top to reach workers
Rescue workers at the collapsed tunnel in Uttarkashi of Uttarakhand started exploring other ways to reach workers, including from the top of the mountain face through which the tunnel is being constructed, officials said on Saturday.
The longer 170metre route from the top, running simultaneously with other approaches, may take far longer to bore through than the approximately 60 metres of rubble at the southern entrance.
Rescue workers had worked on Saturday to install a third auger machine to pierce past this rubble, behind which 41 workers are estimated to be trapped. However, even late into the evening, this machine had not started drilling. Bhaskar Khulbe, a former adviser to the Prime Minister’s Office deputed to the rescue site, put forth a tentative timeline of four or five days for the workers to get out through any of the approaches happening now.
Delays in installing the crawlable pipe through which the trapped workers can escape have led to heightened tensions
Mr. Khulbe said that experts had met and agreed to drill into the mountain around the tunnel from all sides — above, from the sides, and from the other end of the underconstruction tunnel in Barkot, simultaneously.
These efforts will play out along with the initial plan to drill into the fallen rubble from the Silkyara side.
The delays in installing the crawlable pipe through which the trapped workers can escape have led to heightened tensions between families of the workers, their fellow labourers, and local authorities.
‘New solutions’
“[Seven] days is not a small time,” Mrityunjay Kumar, a day shift worker from Bihar at the tunnel project, complained. “There has been no end to this, just one new solution after the other. How many days will they [the workers] keep eating dry food?”
Authorities projected presence across all levels, as motorcades of officials from the State government crowded the narrow highways, helicopters touched down nearby with senior officials, and a foreign expert from Australia visited the tunnel to provide counsel.
And yet, the tip of the spear in all these efforts — the auger machine drilling through the rubble at the southern entrance, lay quiet for over a day, and there was no indication that any further progress on the heap was impending.
The workers’ health conditions, officials insisted, were stable, with continued dry foods, water and medicine being supplied to them.