Two weeks after a highway tunnel collapsed in India's Uttarakhand state, rescue teams have still been unable to extricate the 41 trapped workers.
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| Rescue efforts are underway to save workers trapped at the site of a tunnel collapse in Uttarakhand state, India. (Source: Hindustan) |
On November 25th, rescue teams deployed new excavators to the site to create a vertical shaft down into the tunnel, after previous attempts to open a path were hampered when they were only meters away from the trapped people.
According to engineers' calculations, the aforementioned vertical shaft needs to be approximately 89 meters deep to ensure the safety of those trapped underneath, given the subsidence of the ground. The collapse occurred in the Himalayan region, so the mountainous terrain also poses an obstacle to rescue efforts.
Engineers laid a metal pipe through 57 meters of earth, rock, cement, metal bars, and construction machinery buried underground. At a location about 9 meters from where the workers were trapped, excavation with a giant drilling machine had to be temporarily halted. A rescue team also deployed to excavate at a third location further away, about 480 meters.
Arnold Dix, president of the International Association of Tunneling and Underground Space, said the main excavator had broken down, disrupting the excavation.
Since the tunnel collapsed on November 12th, rescue efforts have been slow and complicated as more rocks and soil continue to fall, and crucial heavy drilling equipment repeatedly malfunctions or breaks down.
The air force has dropped relief supplies twice for those stranded. Ambulances remain on standby at the scene, while a field hospital has been set up to receive those trapped.
On November 21, rescue workers got their first glimpse of the trapped workers thanks to images captured by endoscopes they lowered along the narrow tunnel used to deliver oxygen, food, and water to those below. 41 workers survived in the collapsed section of the tunnel, which is approximately 2km long and 8.5m high.
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