Uttarakhand tunnel collapse Day 11: Rescuers identify location for vertical drilling to evacuate 41 trapped labourers

Giving an update, the director of National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL), Anshu Manish Khulko, said the location for vertical drilling has been identified and road work for vertical drilling on the hill above the tunnel is almost complete.

Uttarkashi: Rescuers scouting through the rubble for a breakthrough to create a passage for the evacuation of 41 trapped workers identified a location for vertical drilling for safe evacuation from the Silkyara Tunnel on Wednesday.

The headway has been made 11 days after the under-construction structure collapsed on Sunday. The Director of National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL), Anshu Manish Khulko, said, "The location for vertical drilling has been identified. Road work for vertical drilling on the hill above the tunnel is almost complete. More than 350 meters of road construction work is complete. BRO is building a road from both Silkyara and Barkot sides which is almost complete."

Meanwhile, a piling machine that was stuck on Tuesday due to the road being narrow, has now reached the Silkyara tunnel site. Rescuers had attempted 'horizontal drilling' and fed trapped workers with solid cooked food simultaneously.

A total of five agencies-- ONGC, SJVNL, RVNL, NHIDCL, and THDCL-- have been roped in to carry out specific responsibilities to evacuate the 41 labourers trapped for 10 days in the 2-km-built portion of the under-construction structure following a landslide.

Despite the rescuers achieving a breakthrough on Monday evening by laying a 6-inch-wide pipe, the trapped men were only provided fruits such as bananas, oranges, and medicines today as Khichdi in cylindrical plastic bottles could not pass through the 53-metre-long alternative lifeline.

Labourers trapped in the Silkyara tunnel were given veg pulao, matar-paneer, and chapatis with butter for dinner on Tuesday night through a food pipe stuck through the collapsed part of the structure. The collapse occurred on November 12 during the construction of a tunnel from Silkyara to Barkot, trapping 41 labourers due to a muck fall in a 60-metre stretch on the Silkyara side of the tunnel.

The NDMA official said that on November 12, the tunnel caved in and that the other Barkot side of the tunnel was already closed, as work on that side had not yet started. The rescue team on Monday evening managed to lay a 6-inch pipe through which solid food and mobile chargers were sent inside the collapsed section of the Silkyara Tunnel.

On Tuesday morning, rescuers released a video which showed an endoscopy camera inserted into the tunnel. The first visuals captured showed the 41 workers had ample space inside the tunnel for them to move about.

Visuals of workers trapped inside for the past 10 days emerged on Tuesday morning, bringing some sort of relief to anxious relatives, many of whom are camping outside the site of the collapsed tunnel.