Bid to free trapped workers enters 3rd week

SILKYARA TUNNEL, India — India's military brought in specialized equipment on Sunday as efforts to free 41 trapped workers entered the third week, with digging continuing in three directions after repeated setbacks in the operation.

The Indian Air Force said on Sunday it was "responding with alacrity", as it assisted in the rescue operation that began after the partial collapse of the under-construction Silkyara road tunnel in the state of Uttarakhand on Nov 12.

Rescue officials said they had called for a superheated plasma cutter to be brought to the remote mountain location, after engineers driving a metal pipe horizontally through 57 meters of rock and concrete ran into metal girders and construction vehicles buried in the earth.

A giant earth-boring machine snapped just 9 meters from breaking through.

The plasma cutter will be used to remove the broken giant earth-boring drill and metal blocking the horizontal route. After that, digging will continue by hand.

Thick metal girders in the rubble are blocking the route. Using conventional oxyacetylene cutters to clear them is tricky from inside the confined pipe, only wide enough for a man to crawl through.

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said on Saturday that vertical drilling had begun to dig 89 meters downward, a risky route above the men in an area that has already suffered a collapse.

Work has also begun from the far side of the road tunnel, a much longer third route estimated to be about 480 meters.

The workers were seen alive for the first time on Tuesday, peering into the lens of an endoscopic camera sent by rescuers down a thin pipe through which air, food, water and electricity are being delivered.

Dhami said the men are in good spirits, with a basic telephone exchange set up so that families of the trapped men — many of whom are migrant workers from poor families — could call in to speak to them.

Efforts have been painfully slow, complicated by falling debris and repeated breakdowns of drilling machines.

Hopes that the team was on the verge of a breakthrough on Wednesday were dashed, with a government statement warning of the "challenging Himalayan terrain".

Indrajeet Kumar told The Times of India newspaper he "feels like crying" when he speaks to his brother Vishwajeet, who is among the trapped workers. Kumar questioned why they were still stuck after reports that they "would be out soon".

Syed Ata Hasnain, a senior rescue official and retired general, called on Saturday for patience.

"A very difficult operation is going on," he said.

Agencies via Xinhua