New Delhi: Rescuers have drilled more than halfway through the debris, as efforts to extricate the 41 men trapped inside the under-construction Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhand’s Uttarkashi district entered its 10th day.
Around 5 am on 12 November, a 30-meter section of the Silkyara Tunnel (or the Silkyara-Barkot tunnel), part of the central government’s ambitious Char Dham all-weather road project, collapsed. Efforts have been on since to rescue the workers trapped inside.
Former advisor to PMO, Bhaskar Khulbe, surveyed rescue operations Wednesday and said workers trapped inside were in “high spirits”. He added that about 39 metres of the estimated 60 metres of debris have been cleared.
Rescuers from national and international teams are drilling through the rubble, in order to push in a pipe wide enough for the men to crawl out. The drilling operation has been going steady for the past few days, according to authorities, after initial machine-related snags.
“I spoke to the workers. They are in high spirits. Rescuers are also very positive,” Khulbe said, without giving a timeline of when the men would be able to come out.
Authorities Tuesday released the first visuals of the trapped men, after they managed to push a medical endoscopy camera through a newly-laid six-inch pipe. The short video showed the men in white-and-yellow hardhats, communicating with rescuers from the confined space. Throughout Tuesday, several people, including relatives, spoke to the trapped men.
A cooked meal of khichdi packed in bottles for the workers could not be delivered to them Monday, owing to blockage in the 6-inch pipe they were to be sent through. However, the blockage — attributed to rocks — had been resolved by Tuesday and cooked meals finally delivered to the workers. The men were previously being sent dry fruits.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami Wednesday shared on social media platform X (previously Twitter) that Prime Minister Narendra Modi continues to take daily updates of the rescue operations.
Also read: Faith & perseverance — glimpses of 10-day rescue ops for 41 workers trapped inside Uttarkashi tunnel