Rescuers at tunnel collapse in India come up with alternative plan on day 7

INDIA:

Rescuers trying to reach workers trapped for nearly a week in a collapsed highway tunnel in the Indian Himalayas began working out an alternative plan on Saturday after the operation hit a snag the previous day.

The men have been trapped in the hillside tunnel since Sunday morning after it caved in and are safe, authorities said. The trapped workers have light and receive oxygen, food, water and medication through a tube and can communicate by radio.

The new plan involves vertical drilling from the top of the mountain under which 41 workers were trapped while working on a highway tunnel, said DP Baloni, divisional forest officer for Uttarkashi, in India’s northern Uttarakhand state.

The rescue team drilled horizontally through the collapsed tunnel debris to reach the trapped workers. But the machine used to drill it broke on Friday and a new one flew in on Saturday.

The new plan is to simultaneously drill from the side and the top, said Bhaskar Khulbe, special duty officer for the tunnel project.

A geological survey was conducted by a team of experts that helped identify four points on the mountain through which vertical drilling is possible, Khulbe said.

Drilling remains suspended for now and it will take another four or five days “to get the good news,” Khulbe told reporters.

Authorities have not said what caused the 4.5km tunnel to collapse, but the area is prone to landslides, earthquakes and flooding.

Fifty to 60 workers were on the night shift at the time of the collapse and those near the exit walked out of the tunnel onto the national highway that is part of the Char Dham Hindu route.

Reading: Indian workers remain trapped in a collapsed tunnel as rescue struggles

Earlier in the day, the disaster management office revised the number of people trapped since Sunday morning in the tunnel in Uttarakhand state to 41 from 40.

“Our plan is to open a 90-meter escape tunnel with a diameter of 1.2 meters,” said Jasvant Kapoor, general manager at SJVN, a state-owned company involved in rescue efforts.

Nearly 100 tunnel workers gathered at the site on Saturday, demanding faster progress in reaching and freeing those trapped.

Vishnu Sahu, a laborer who led the protest, said the rescue team was keeping the workers in the dark about the progress of the rescue.

“We want the top people in the company to come here,” Sahu said.