Uttarakhand Tunnel Collapse: Rescuers Achieve Breakthrough, Trapped Workers Likely To Start Coming Out Soon

At around 1:10 pm today (28 November), the rescue team achieved a breakthrough at the Silkyara-Barkot tunnel in Uttarkashi, with the trapped workers likely to be taken out soon, Indian Express reported citing sources.

Medical personnel and ambulances have been dispatched to the site, ready to promptly assist the 41 workers who were trapped.

The rescue mission to save the 41 workers stuck inside the Silkyara tunnel entered its 16th day on Monday evening with the commencement of rat-hole mining.

Six rat-hole miners were brought in from Delhi and Jhansi to manually dig into the tunnels.

The workers are trapped behind approximately 60 metres of debris, with their rescuers approximately 12 metres away.

Mahmood Ahmed, the Additional Secretary of the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, reported that the work on vertical drilling is progressing rapidly, with approximately 36 meters of the vertical tunnel already completed.

The project requires a total of 86 meters to be drilled vertically for the creation of an escape passage.

Pipes with a diameter of 1.2 meters are being installed from the top of the tunnel, a task that started on Sunday as an alternative plan following the damage to the auger machine.

The blades of this machine, which had become lodged in the rubble at the Silkyara tunnel, were extracted early on Monday.

The manual drilling operations commenced after the auger machine got stuck in the rubble on Friday and had to be pulled out.

This led to the authorities exploring other alternatives such as vertical drilling from above the tunnel. So far, about 40 per cent of the necessary 86-meter vertical drilling has been successfully completed.