Uttarakhand tunnel rescue: Rat hole mining will be used to manually drill out debris

On the sixteenth day of ongoing rescue operations in the Silkyara tunnel, officials plan to employ a rat hole mining technique for manual drilling to remove the debris inside the pipe in an attempt to intensify the rescue operations in Uttarkashi. Six experts have arrived at the location to perform the manual drilling work, according to official sources. To manually remove the debris, they will enter the tunnel’s 800-mm pipe. Together with civilians, the team consists of engineers from the Madras Engineering Group of the Indian Army.

These specialized teams will carry a hammer, shovel, trowel, and a life support system for oxygen while inside the tunnel in addition to the drilling machine. A plasma cutter was used earlier today to cut and remove the auger machine that was being used to drill the tunnel horizontally but became lodged inside the pipe. The rat miners will also have to clear the 48 meters of debris that the auger machine stuck inside the pipe produced at the tunnel’s mouth.

Rat miners are specialists in digging and drilling manually in narrow passages including tube mines who mostly work in mines and have the experience of drilling for hours.
The rat hole mining technique is generally used in coal mining, especially in regions that have difficult terrain.
“It is a challenging operation. We were called in from Delhi. We reached here yesterday. We are basically from Madhya Pradesh. We will try our best to complete the drilling process as soon as possible,” one of the civilian specialists who reached the site to carry out manual drilling told.