All 40 workers declared safe after tunnel collapse in northern India
Published on: Monday, November 13, 2023
By: AFP
The 4.5km tunnel is being constructed between Silkyara and Dandalgaon to connect two of the holiest Hindu shrines. (SDRF/AP pic)
DEHRADUN: Rescue workers in northern India said today that they had made contact with 40 workers trapped for over 24 hours after the road tunnel they were building collapsed.
“All the 40 workers trapped inside the tunnel are safe,” Karamveer Singh Bhandari, a senior commander in the National Disaster Response Force told AFP, from the site in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand. “We sent them water and food.”
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The collapse occurred earlier yesterday morning, and rescue teams used heavy excavators to clear piles of debris in desperate efforts to reach the 40 men.
Oxygen was being pumped into the blocked portion of the tunnel, with food sent through a water pipe.
Initial contact was made via a note on a scrap of paper, but later rescuers managed to connect using radio handsets.
“Some small food packets were sent in through a pipe which is also taking oxygen inside,” rescue official Durgesh Rathodi told AFP from the site.
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Rathodi said excavators had removed about 20m of heavy debris, but the men were 40m beyond that point.
“Due to excess debris in the tunnel, we are facing some difficulty in the rescue, but our team is leaving no stone unturned,” Bhandari added.
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Uttarakhand’s chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, who today flew to the site of the accident, said the work to remove tonnes of tumbled concrete debris was “being made continuously to bring them out safely”, he wrote on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
“Contact has been made with the workers trapped in the tunnel through a walkie-talkie,” he said. “Efforts are being made to get them out safely soon.”
One rescue worker, quoted by the Press Trust of India news agency, said the men were contacted shortly after midnight today.
Disaster response official Devendra Patwal said that while the men were trapped, they had space in the tunnel area where they were.
“The good thing is that the labourers are not crammed in, and have a buffer of around 400m to walk and breathe,” Patwal told the Indian Express newspaper.
The 4.5km tunnel is being constructed between Silkyara and Dandalgaon to connect two of the holiest Hindu shrines of Uttarkashi and Yamunotri.
Photographs released by the government rescue teams showed huge piles of rubble blocking the wide tunnel, with twisted metal bars on its broken roof poking down in front of the rubble.
The tunnel is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Char Dham Road Project, which is meant to improve connectivity for some of the most popular Hindu shrines in the country, as well as areas bordering China.
Accidents on large infrastructure construction sites are common in India.
In January, at least 200 people were killed in flash floods in ecologically fragile Uttarakhand in a disaster that experts partly blamed on excessive development.
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