Renewed drilling begins to rescue 40 trapped men

LUCK:

Rescuers renewed efforts Thursday to reach 40 men trapped inside a collapsed highway tunnel in India for a fifth day, making slow progress as they began to drill through rock debris and soil.

Authorities said they were confident an advanced drilling rig flown in from New Delhi would speed up the rescue at the site in the northern state of Uttarakhand.

The plan is to drill a hole and make room for a pipe that can be used by the trapped men to crawl to safety.

The drill had penetrated about 3 meters (10 feet) of debris by Thursday morning, officials said, adding that they had to cover a total distance of about 60 meters.

The machine can drill through about 2-2.5 meters of rock per hour, said Ranjit Sinha, the state’s senior disaster management officer.

Two of the trapped construction workers were treated for nausea and headaches as they endured a fifth day confined to a small area behind the rubble, officials said.

“There is electricity, water and we are sending food. The new machine, which is more powerful and faster, has been developed,” VK Singh, federal minister of state for road transport and highways and retired army chief, told reporters.

“Our priority is to save them all. The morale of the people trapped inside is high. We are very optimistic to get them out,” he said.

Singh said Indian agencies involved in the rescue effort were consulting with experts in Austria, Norway and Thailand, but did not elaborate.

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

Asked about local media reports that India had consulted Thai experts involved in the rescue of 12 boys trapped in a cave complex in 2018, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said: “Technical experts have also been consulted who have faced such situations in foreign countries. .”

An ambitious project

The 4.5-kilometer (3-mile) tunnel is part of the Char Dham Expressway, one of the most ambitious projects of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. The $1.5 billion project aims to connect four Hindu pilgrimage sites through 890 km of roads.

Since the tunnel collapse, the trapped men have been supplied with food, water and oxygen through a tube and are in contact with rescuers via radio and television.

“Two of them, who complained of nausea and mild headache, were given medication through the tube and are fine now,” said Arpan Yaduvanshi, a local police officer.

Local media reported that a six-bed makeshift hospital had been set up near the tunnel to handle any medical care the men might need once rescued.

Authorities have not said what caused the tunnel to cave in, but the area is prone to landslides, earthquakes and flooding. The highway project has faced some criticism from environmental experts, and some work was halted in January after hundreds of homes along the routes were damaged by subsidence.

The federal government said it used environmentally friendly techniques in the design to make geologically unstable land safer.