Uttarakhand Tunnel Collapse: Following A String of Failures, Attention Is Now Directed Towards Manually Retrieving 41 Trapped Men

Following two consecutive failures to free 41 laborers trapped in a tunnel in Uttarkashi, Uttarakhand, the authorities are now considering other options to free the men who are trapped behind the roughly 60-meter-thick wall of debris.

The auger drilling equipment at the Silkyara-Barkot tunnel earlier fell through the rubble.

According to HT, “Officials are now focusing on two options: drilling down 85–90 meters from the top of the mountain or manually drilling through the last 10 or 12 meters of rubble.”

Lt Gen (retd) Syed Ata Hasnain, a member of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), said, “This operation could take a long time.”

Arnold Dix, an international tunneling adviser, predicted that the workers would be gone “by Christmas” and attributed the operation’s delays to a “cautious approach.”

According to the article, “manual drilling would involve individual workers entering the 47-meter rescue passage that has already been bored, drilling for a short while in the confined space, and then leaving to let someone else take over.”

“The only person in the front may be the one who has to enter the little pipes. Longer work is impossible in such a little space. Another issue is the lack of oxygen and the heat produced by the machine, according to an RVNL source quoted in the HT story.

According to the article, the operation was expected to start today after the rescuers removed the auger machine’s blades that were lodged within the evacuation pipes that were being forced through the rubble to provide a way for the men who have been trapped since November 12 to climb out of.

According to earlier accounts, the drill bit damaged the steel pipes used in the tunnel’s construction, causing the platform where the 25-ton machine was installed to become unstable. As a result, the drilling could not be restarted. The evacuation pipe that was being forced through the 800 mm diameter hole being drilled became distorted, authorities claimed on Friday, and the equipment became stalled just 10 meters from breaking through while it was being dismantled and rebuilt.

According to an official operating report, the evacuation pipes won’t be pushed any further until the “obstruction is removed.”