'Dark, wet, grim': Lives in balance as rescue stalls

Hundreds of relief personnel from India's top agencies stared helplessly into a dark and damp abyss in a remote corner of Assam on Thursday as frantic efforts to pump out water from a flooded mine appeared stalled even as the lives of about a dozen workers hung in the balance.

- Utpal Parashar and Prawesh Lama

A multi-agency effort to rescue workers trapped inside an illegal mine in Assam's Dima Hasao district was suspended after four fruitless days as the focus shifted on taking out the columns of water that had flooded the 300-feet deep pit and marooned between nine and 15 unsuspecting miners.

The desolate silence was only punctured by the steady hum of two pumps that worked through the day to de-water the quarry and reach the workers trapped in a web of underground tunnels, known colloquially as outlawed rat hole mines.

The operation was suspended after authorities appeared unable to reduce the estimated 100 feet of water in the mine, suggesting that an underground aquifer was constantly inundating the main pit and the tunnels that branched out.

"We were using two low-volume pumps to extract water, but the water level has not gone down. One pump that was sent by the Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC) couldn't be used as it was not submersible," said GD Tripathi, CEO of the Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA).

This left some of India's besttrained rescue personnel and divers looking helplessly into what seemed like a bottomless pit, with divers recounting that there are at least seven rat hole mines at the bottom of the well which branch out further into smaller ones. Since operations began on Monday, rescuers have not been able to establish contact with the miners, or reach anyone except pulling out one body.

The height of the rat holes are around 2-3 feet, not enough space for divers to move in with their equipment, the authorities said, signalling more hurdles ahead in what now appears to be an uphill struggle to save the miners.

"There's zero visibility in the 300-feet deep well which is filled with water till around 100 feet. The water is murky and there's no blueprint, map, scale diagram or sketch that could give us an idea of the well of the mine," said one of the divers involved in the rescue.