Light at end of tunnel: Workers safe amid op

At 3.45am on Tuesday morning, the first grainy visuals were seen of a man in a blue hard hat peering into the six-inch pipeline. From one end, there was the booming voice of rescuers, looking on anxiously. “Are you okay?” the rescuer asked. The man in the hat responded, “I am okay.”

- Amit Bathla

In the moments that followed, rescuers asked the men on the other side to pull the endoscopic camera at the end of a 53-metre flexible cable out slowly, and told them that they would reach them soon. Soon, a small screen that the rescuers were peering into were filled with images of a collapsed, but cavernous tunnel, and a group of men; tired but very much alive.

Ten days after an under-construction tunnel between Silkyara and Barkot in Uttarkashi on the national highway that is part of the Char Dham project collapsed, rescuers were finally able to establish video communication with the 41 workers that have been trapped inside. Reassuringly, the visuals confirmed that the men were all alive, that they had access to electricity with lights visible on in the background, had been drinking water, eating, and taking walks. The visuals renewed hope that the prolonged but difficult rescue operations would be successful.

Even as barrelling into the collapsed tunnel to create pathways through which the 41 men can be evacuated has proved difficult, there was breakthrough on Monday evening when rescuers were able to insert a second six-inch pipe into the debris. This has allowed the two-way video communications, as well as hot cooked food being sent to the stranded men. Thus far, from November 12 when the tunnel first collapse, rescuers were only able to send dry food such as puffed rice and chickpeas through a four-inch pipeline, and were only able to communicate through walkie-talkies, or shouting through the pipe.