Double push for tunnel rescue as wait continues

Rescuers initiated the process of manual drilling to rescue 41 workers trapped behind a 60m thick wall of debris under the Silkyara-Barkot tunnel late on Monday evening, after removing a part of an augur machine stuck inside the evacuation pipes, even as vertical drilling from the top of the mountain continued, with about 50 metres left.

- Amit Bathla

Officials are focusing on the two methods to evacuate the men, trapped in increasingly desperate conditions since a part of the 4.5km-long tunnel collapsed two weeks ago, as the augur machine — a corkscrew-like device with a rotary blade at the front — went bust on Friday, upon getting entangled in an iron girder after drilling 46.8 metres into the debris.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is in Hyderabad, on Monday said that all government agencies are working round-the-clock to rescue the workers. “In this campaign, nature is constantly giving us challenges, but we are standing firm and trying round the clock,” he said.

An official release on the operation on Monday said, “After visual inspection by welders it was found that the cutter of the augur has been entangled with lattice girder bars, which damaged 1.5m length of the 800mm-wide passage pipe.”

Now that it has been removed, “rat miners” have started manually drilling through the narrow pipe to reach the workers, officials said.

Explaining the process, officials said that three miners will go inside the pipe at a time — one will drill, another will collect muck and the third will push the muck through a trolley to the other side of the pipe.