'Coming Home By Christmas...': Tunnel Expert On Rescue Of 41 Trapped Workers In Uttarakhand

New Delhi: The rescue mission to save 41 men trapped in a tunnel in Uttarakhand has hit a roadblock. The machine that was supposed to drill through the mountain has failed. International tunneling expert Arnold Dix, who is overseeing the rescue mission, has vowed to bring the workers home by Christmas. “The drilling, augering has stopped. It’s too much for the auger (machine), it is not going to do anything more,” said micro tunneling expert Arnold Dix on Uttarkashi tunnel rescue. He added that the rescue team is exploring other options, but they are also mindful of the safety of the men and the rescuers.

“We are looking at multiple options, but with each option we are considering how do we make sure that 41 men come home safe and we don’t hurt anyone. The mountain has again resisted the auger, so we are rethinking our approach,” he said. Despite the challenges, Dix expressed his confidence that the 41 men will be freed by Christmas. “I am confident that the 41 men are coming home by Christmas,” he said.

The fate of 41 labourers trapped inside the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhand for the past 13 days hangs in the balance as the rescue operation faces multiple challenges. The machine that was supposed to bore through the debris and create a passage for the workers has encountered a metal obstacle, forcing the rescuers to stop drilling on Friday night. This is the latest setback in the multi-agency effort that began on November 12 when a landslide caused a part of the under-construction tunnel on the Char Dham route to collapse.

The rescuers had managed to push a 46.8-metre-long steel pipe into the drilled hole, out of the estimated 60-metre-long blocked stretch. They had also inserted a six-inch-wide tube to supply food, medicines and other essentials to the workers, who are in a two-kilometre-long section of the tunnel. The tube also enabled the workers to communicate with their relatives and the rescue team, and to send images of their condition through an endoscopic camera.

However, with the drilling machine failing to make further progress, the rescuers are considering other options such as manually drilling the remaining 10 to 12 metres or creating a vertical escape passage from the top of the tunnel.

An official said that manual drilling is a slower process, while vertical drilling is a more complicated and precise one. A big drilling machine was moved to the hill above the tunnel on Saturday morning, where two spots with the lowest elevation have been identified by experts for vertical drilling. The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) has already built a 1.5-km access road to the top of the tunnel for this purpose.

The repeated delays and difficulties have made the relatives of the trapped workers anxious and impatient. “For the last two days we are being assured by officials that they (trapped workers) are being evacuated soon but something or the other happens and the process gets delayed,” said Devender Kisku from Banka in Bihar, whose brother Virender Kisku is among the trapped workers.