Uttarkashi (TIP)- With the auger machine encountering hurdles in the rubble time and again, rescuers are considering switching over to manual drilling at the Silkyara tunnel where 41 labourers have been trapped for the past 13 days, officials said on Saturday, November 25. Drilling at the collapsed portion of the tunnel to rescue the trapped men was halted again on Friday night, in yet another setback to the multi-agency effort.
An official said the auger drilling machine faced a hurdle, apparently a metal object, a little after drilling resumed on Friday, a day after officials had put the operation on hold following technical problems.
With one hurdle or the other not letting the auger machine drill further and lay steel pipes through the rubble to prepare an escape route for the trapped workers, the option of manual drilling is being considered, an official said.
However, he said manual drilling takes longer.
The rescue effort began on November 12 when a portion of the under-construction tunnel on Uttarakhand’s Char Dham route collapsed following a landslide, trapping workers inside.
The team of experts who came to conduct a survey at the rescue site of the Silkyara tunnel, informed that there were no heavy objects up to 5 metres in the rescue tunnel. The team, which came from Parsan Overseas Pvt Ltd Delhi, used the ground-penetrating radar (GPR) technique to examine the rescue tunnel.
“We were called because something got stuck in the auger machine. GPR helps us know how far away the metallic object is. GPR basically scans; therefore, two people are needed, one to run the GPR and the other to acquire the data. Two members of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) were sent with me inside the tunnel for safety reasons. After acquiring the data with GPR technology, we came to the conclusion that there were no heavy objects up to 5 metres in the rescue tunnel,” geophysicist Chendoor told ANI.
The drilling by the American-made auger machine to rescue the trapped workers was halted after the rescue team faced a technical glitch.
“We hope that all of them are rescued safely. They have been stuck there since November 12. Every expert says that there is no escape tunnel. No rules and regulations were followed…The central or state government should take accountability from the contractors,” Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi on Friday said
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami directed the officials that the last phase of the rescue operation should be conducted at a fast pace and with complete caution.
The rescue teams also are inserting pipes into the dug-out channel and welding them together to serve as a passageway. About 46 meters (151 feet) of pipe has been put in so far, according to Panwar.