Uttarakhand Tunnel Collapse: Landline facility set up for trapped workers; auger drill stuck in rubble, rescue may take several weeks more | Day 14

A landline facility has been set up at the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi to keep trapped workers connected with their family members, officials said on Saturday.
The facility has been set up by the BSNL and a handset will be given to the workers trapped inside the partially collapsed tunnel for the past 13 days, they said.

"We have set up a telephone exchange. We will give them a phone connected with the line via the pipe being used for sending food. This phone will have incoming and outgoing facilities. They can talk to their family," DGM, BSNL, Rakesh Chaudhary told PTI.

The exchange has been set up 200 metres away from the Silkyara tunnel, Chaudhary said.

Impatience is growing among 41 trapped men and their kin, after the rescue work was stopped due to some hurdles on Friday.

At present, the communication between the trapped workers and their relatives is facilitated by a communication system set up through a six-inch wide pipe.

An endoscopic camera was also pushed through this pipe, allowing rescue workers and relatives of the trapped men to see the condition inside. Drilling at the collapsed portion of the tunnel has been halted since Friday as the the auger machine faced hurdles one after another. A tunnelling expert at the site said on Saturday the machine was broken.

Rescuers are now exploring other options such as drilling the remaining stretch of 10 to 12 metres manually or creating a vertical escape passage for the 41 labourers trapped inside.

The multi-agency rescue effort began November 12 when a portion of the under-construction tunnel on Uttarakhand's Char Dham route collapsed following a landslide, trapping the workers inside.

Auger drill stuck in rubble, rescue may take several weeks more

The blades of the augering machine drilling through the rubble of the collapsed Silkyara tunnel were on Saturday stuck in the debris, forcing officials to consider switching to other options that could drag on the rescue of 41 workers trapped inside for 13 days by several weeks more.

Officials are now shifting focus to two alternatives --- manual drilling through the remaining 10 or 12 metre stretch of the rubble or drilling down 86 metres from above.

Advising patience, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) member Lt Gen (retd) Syed Ata Hasnain said in Delhi “This operation could take a long time.” At the disaster site, international tunneling advisor Arnold Dix repeated his promise of getting the workers out “by Christmas”.

Manual drilling would involve individual workers entering the already bored 47-metre stretch of the rescue passage, drilling for a brief period in the confined space and then coming out to let some else take over.

This, according to Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, could begin as soon as the equipment stuck in the planned escape passage is brought out.

Heavy equipment, already brought to the site, was being put in place on Saturday for vertical drilling that officials had earlier said could take weeks. The process, Hasnain said, would begin in the “next 24 to 36 hours”.

He indicated that was the quicker of the two main options now being considered.

Drilling was at standstill for almost the entire day Friday, but the extent of the problem was known Saturday when international expert Dix told reporters that the auger machine is “busted”.

“Augering is finished... The auger is broken, destructed," he told reporters.

“The mountain has again resisted the auger, so we are rethinking our approach. I am confident that the 41 men are coming home,” he said, insisting that they remained safe.

When asked to spell out a timeline, Dix said, “I have always promised that they will be home by Christmas.” The 25-tonne drilling machine, out of commission for now, includes an auger -- a giant corkscrew-like device with a cutter at its end. This has so far created a horizontal passage of 46.8 metres into the rubble out of a total estimated length of 60 metres.

A steel chute had been pushed through, in sections, up to this point, where the rotary blades are stuck, followed by the long auger.

About 20 metres of the auger in the chute has been cut out, Uttarakhand Dhami told reporters. A plasma cutter is being airlifted from Hyderabad to tackle the remaining 25 metres.
Once that happens, manual drilling would begin, he said.