Indian workers remain trapped in tunnel as rescue becomes difficult

LUCK:

Rescuers were unable to reach 40 workers trapped in a collapsed highway tunnel in India on Wednesday as huge boulders blocked efforts to build an evacuation route, officials said.

It has been three days since the tunnel collapsed, but the workers are still safe and sound, an official involved in the rescue operation told Reuters.

The trapped men have been given food, water and oxygen through a tube since Sunday morning, after the tunnel gave way at 5:30am. (0000 GMT).

“A heavy machine is being brought from New Delhi to insert an evacuation pipe as the current one is blocked by boulders,” GS Naveen, relief commissioner of Uttar Pradesh state, told Reuters.

There were about 50-60 men working the night shift on the 4.5-kilometer (3-mile) tunnel, which is being built in the neighboring state of Uttarakhand on a national highway that is part of the Char Dham Hindu pilgrimage route.

Reading Heavy machinery was brought in to extricate Indian workers from the collapsed tunnel

Local media reported on Tuesday that those near the tunnel’s exit got out, while 40 deeper inside were trapped.

The Char Dham Expressway is one of the most ambitious projects of the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It aims to connect four Hindu pilgrimage sites in Uttarakhand through 890 kilometers (550 miles) of roads being built at a cost of $1.5 billion.

The mountainous region is prone to landslides, earthquakes and floods, and the incident follows subsidence events that geologists, residents and officials have blamed for rapid construction in the mountains.

The project has faced criticism from environmental experts and some work had been halted after hundreds of homes were damaged by subsidence along the routes.

Work on the tunnel began in 2018 and was due to be completed by July 2022, but has now been pushed back to May 2024, according to a government announcement.