The operation to rescue 41 construction workers trapped in a collapsed tunnel in the Himalayas for 17 days may be nearing completion.
Experts manually drilling through the rubble said only 2 metres of debris remained to be removed.
Syed Ata Hasnain, a spokesman for the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), told reporters that rescuers were “close to the breach but not there yet.” He later added, the rescue operation “will take all night”.
A team of experts in “rat mining” – as the primitive method of extracting coal through very small tunnels is called – was brought to the site after a large mechanical drill broke last week. Since Monday, experts have been working to use hand drills and pulleys to break through and remove the last 12 metres of rubble blocking the tunnel entrance. As the last of the rubble was removed, rescuers inserted a 90-centimetre rescue tube into the tunnel, through which rescuers will carry the workers one by one on stretchers. The state of Uttarakhand’s chief minister, Pushkar Singh Dhami, wrote on X:
Soon, all the labourer brothers will be taken out.
People have been stuck in the 3-mile (4.5km) tunnel since it collapsed on 12 November. Attempts to dig a tunnel to rescue them using powerful drilling machines have been thwarted by a series of obstacles, they have been getting food, water, light, oxygen and medicine through the tube.
On Monday, government agencies leading the operation called on “rat miners” to manually drill through rocks and gravel inside a 90cm-wide evacuation pipe through the rubble after the machinery failed.
Dozens of rescuers with ropes, ladders and stretchers entered the tunnel and 41 ambulances lined up outside to take 41 people to a hospital 30 kilometres away.
The Char Dham project has been heavily criticised by environmental experts. Work was suspended after hundreds of homes were affected by land subsidence along the route. The government said it had used environmentally friendly methods to make the geologically unstable areas safer. It has also ordered the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to audit 29 tunnels under construction across India.
