INDIA:
Rescuers in India hope to finish drilling through the debris on Thursday and free 41 men trapped in a highway tunnel in the Himalayan region after a metal barrier slowed progress, officials said.
The men began the twelfth day of their ordeal confined to the 4.5km tunnel in Uttarakhand state since it caved in early on November 12. Authorities said they are safe, with access to light, oxygen, food, water and medicine.
“Hopefully by the end of the day, if there are no obstacles, rocks or beams, the operation will be successful,” Atul Karwal, head of the National Disaster Response Force, told reporters.
An auger rig has started working and “that’s a very good sign,” he said, adding that work had also begun to advance more discharge pipes.
Reading Indian rescuers close workers trapped in Himalayan tunnel
Rescuers expected to drill through the last third of the 60-meter-long debris blocking the tunnel early Thursday, but had hit a lattice arch of beam steel that took six hours to remove, said Bhaskar Khulbe, tunnel project manager.
Once the drill is through, officials said they plan to send rescuers through the evacuation tube, using wheeled stretchers, to get the trapped men out.
Ambulances were ready to take the men to a hospital about 30 km (20 miles) away on a route cleared of traffic congestion.
Authorities have not said what caused the tunnel to collapse, but the area is prone to landslides, earthquakes and flooding. Efforts to extract the men have been slowed by blockages in drilling in the mountainous terrain.
Read further The first images from the Indian tunnel show workers trapped for nine days
“We are very close. You were all very brave. Everyone is praying for you,” Pushkar Singh Dhami, the state’s chief minister, told Gabbar Singh Negi, one of the stranded, over a wired communication link, in a video shared. from the beginning.
He told another man, Saba Ahmed, that there was only 10 meters (33 feet) left to cover, adding: “It doesn’t look like it will take much time now.”
The collapsed tunnel is on the Char Dham pilgrimage route, one of the most ambitious projects of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.
It aims to connect four major Hindu pilgrimage sites with 890 kilometers (550 miles) of two-lane road, at a cost of $1.5 billion.
After the collapse, the National Highways Authority of India will carry out a safety audit of 29 tunnels it is building, the government said.
a href=”https://tribune.com.pk/story/2447723/indian-rescuers-hope-to-reach-41-trapped-in-tunnel-on-thursday”>Source link
