After four days of rescue effort, 40 construction workers are still trapped in a collapsed road tunnel. Some report feeling sick. The workers were cut off inside a tunnel while working Sunday in India’s mountainous Uttarakhand state. Emergency personnel have contact with the trapped workers. They report that all survived the falling debris that closed off their exit.
Rescuers are working to drill wide pipes through excavated rubble to create a safe passage. But India’s national highway authority says the process is slower than expected. The drilling machine glitched. Rescuers airlifted a more powerful drilling machine from New Delhi. They began assembling it early Wednesday morning.
The authority reports that the workers received “essential eatables such as chickpeas and almonds” through smaller pipes and that all are presently safe. But relatives and friends of the confined grow frustrated as time passes without resolution.
Most of the workers are migrant laborers from across India. Magistrate Abhishek Ruhela reports that some say they are suffering fever and body aches—and that worry is setting in. The rescue team added medicines to the food supplies that can be sent through the small established pipes into the space.
About 200 disaster relief personnel work to free the men. They use drilling equipment and excavators to clean an opening of debris. The plan is to push 2.5-foot diameter steel pipes through to the workers. Then the stranded men can be pulled out safely through that shaft.
But as they work, there is always risk of loosening more debris, which could fall into the shaft they try to create. Worse, it could further collapse the space the workers currently inhabit.
“These are challenges in such rescue operations, but we will overcome them,” Ranjit Sinha, a disaster management official, says.
A landslide on Sunday caused the event. The tunnel collapsed about 500 feet from the entrance. Uttarakhand is a mountainous state dotted with Hindu temples. These attract many pilgrims and tourists. Highway construction in the area has been constant in order to try to accommodate the influx of travelers.
Pray for wisdom for the engineers and rescue workers, and for peace and sustenance for the men trapped inside.
