New Delhi, Nov. 23, (dpa/GNA) – Rescue efforts for the 41 workers who have been stuck in a motorway tunnel in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand for 12 days continue to progress slowly.
Rescue workers have suffered setbacks during their attempts to get to the workers with a drill, coming across steel pipes and other obstacles, authorities said.
Footage of TV channel NDTV showed ambulances waiting at the location on Thursday.
The rescue work was incredibly difficult, Arnold Dix, a professor of engineering and the president of the International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association said.
“Because we are up in the Himalayas, and the Himalayas are technically a very fresh mountain range, which means they’re falling apart,” he continued.
“That means when you put a tunnel through, you’ve constantly got this risk that there’s going to be a collapse and so as engineers you’re fighting that risk,” Dix said.
The plan is to push tubes into the rubble through which the men can climb out, a kind of “door,” as Dix called it. “But there is a risk that the whole thing will collapse again,” he warned.
Dix praised the “awesome” local team of “seasoned Himalayan engineers and technicians” whose first action was to burrow a pipe 12 centimetres in diameter down to the trapped men, which became the lifeline, he said.
The 4.5-kilometre tunnel, which was under construction, partially collapsed on November 12 following a landslide. It lies in a region dotted with Hindu temples close to the town of Uttarkashi. The region is a popular destination for pilgrims.
GNA