Devanjana Mukherjee, Khabri Media
The rescue teams on Tuesday achieved a major breakthrough as all 41 trapped workers were rescued from the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi. The laying of pipes through the rubble at Silkyara tunnel was completed after hard work of 17 days this morning.
Rat-hole miners were seen stepping out of the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi with their drillers. Besides, NDRF and SDRF teams were seen entering with their gear to evacuate the 41 trapped workers at the collapse site. To subscribe please click tau.id/2iy6f and access our live channel.
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Union Minister Nitin Gadkari on Tuesday thanked the people behind the rescue operation at Sikyara tunnel in Uttarkashi. A portion of the tunnel caved in on November 12, the debris falling in the 60-metre stretch on the Silkyara side of the tunnel, trapping 41 labourers inside the under-construction structure.
“The exact time of breakthrough was 7:05 pm. Uttarakhand CM, Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways and Civil Aviation Gen VK Singh are present there,” says Harpal Singh, Project Head, Zoji-la Tunnel.
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The extraction process took some time to allow each worker to re-acclimatise to surface conditions, where the temperature is around 14 degrees Celsius at this time. The workers were brought out on specially modified stretchers; these were lowered manually down a two-metre-wide pipe inserted into holes drilled into the hillside.
Personnel from the National Disaster Response Force, or NDRF, had gone down the pipe first to assess the condition of the trapped men and guide them through rescue protocols. Each worker was strapped to the stretcher that was then manually pulled up through 60 metres of rock and debris.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami met the workers who have been rescued along with Union Minister of State General (Retd) VK Singh. CM further stated that the work of pipe pushing inside the Silkyara tunnel.
The ambulances – that are 41 in total, one for each worker – will be provided a ‘green corridor’ to reach emergency medical facilities set up in Chinyalisaur, which is around 30 km away. Visuals from the rescue site showed an ambulance pulling away from the rescue site.
