INDIAN rescuers on Saturday (25) brought a new digging device to open a vertical shaft and free 41 workers trapped in a collapsed road tunnel for two weeks, after management efforts encountered obstacles just a few meters away only to succeed in the men.
In the latest setback in frantic attempts to rescue desperate workers, engineers running a steel pipe through 57 meters (187 feet) of rock and concrete slammed steel bars and structure vehicles buried in the earth.
Just nine meters (30 feet) from the wayway, drilling with a giant drilling device is paralyzed, while gas-cutting equipment to remove thick steel beams from inside the confined pipe, wide enough for a man to move slowly through, It’s complicated.
“Lately work is being done to reduce the blockade,” senior local official Abhishek Ruhela said on Saturday.
Arnold Dix, president of the International Association of Tunneling and Underground Space, said the main drilling device is damaged and work is underway to remove it.
“The device has broken down. It’s irreparable. It’s broken,” he said at the tunnel site.
But Dix, who is helping with relief efforts, said she doesn’t lose hope because there are “so many ways” to succeed with men.
“I’m convinced that all the men are coming home. “
Rescue efforts were incredibly slow, confusing due to falling debris and repeated breakdowns of heavy and drilling machinery, and the Air Force had to vent new equipment on two occasions.
Ambulances are on standby and a hospital is ready to rescue the men, who have been trapped since the collapse of part of the Silkyara tunnel structure in the northern state of Uttarakhand on Nov. 12.
“Difficult terrain of the Himalayas”
At the same time, AFP journalists at the scene saw a heavy excavator advance along a specially excavated path to the lowest part of a forested hill above the tunnel to start a dangerous vertical shaft.
“The work to achieve internal trapped personnel is in its final stages,” Ruhela said. “Every conceivable feature is being considered to achieve them. “
Officials estimate the proposed vertical shaft would have an intensity of 89 meters (291 feet), a complex excavation above the men in a site that has already collapsed.
Work has also begun on the excavation of a third, much longer direction on the other side of the road tunnel, estimated at about 480 metres.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said the government and foreign experts were taking advantage of all options.
“We will soon be able to safely evacuate our fellow runners,” he said in a social media post.
Rescuers have stretchers equipped with wheels to be able to drag the exhausted men with 57 meters of hose, if they manage to get through the last segment of debris blocking their escape.
The staff were first seen alive on Tuesday (21) through the lens of an endoscopic camera sent by rescuers into a thin tube through which air, food, water and electrical power circulate.
Since Wednesday (22), officials have continuously said they are optimistic about a breakthrough in the coming hours, but the government also noted that any timetable is “subject to change due to technical issues, complicated Himalayan terrain and unforeseen emergencies. “
“Very cautious about further progress”
Syed Ata Hasnain, a senior aid official and retired general, said their efforts were “like a battle. “
“We will have to get those brave men out by all means,” he told reporters on Friday afternoon, adding that “all mandatory resources” were being used.
“We’re going to be very, very careful in proceeding to make progress,” he said.
Although they are trapped, they have a lot of dominance in the tunnel, with a domain that is 8. 5 meters high and about two kilometers long.
(AFP)