The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) held a demonstration on Friday on how wheeled stretchers would be moved through the pipeline that was set up to rescue 41 workers who were trapped in an Uttarkashi section of the Silkyara tunnel that collapsed more than a week ago.
Twelve days have passed since the workers were trapped after a section of the tunnel under construction on the Char Dham route collapsed on November 12, cutting off its exit. They are believed to be nearly free, despite continuous efforts.
The NDRF workers who entered the pipeline for the demonstration reported that they were able to exit the structure without difficulty and that they did not have any breathing issues while performing the exercise. The inserted pipe had to have a 2-meter section cut off because friction during drilling compressed it, according to Bhaskar Khulbe, a former advisor to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). According to him, this occurred on Thursday after the auger heavy-duty driller ran into a barrier and applied additional pressure.
The platform that the Augur drilling machine was mounted on experienced some cracks on Thursday, according to Khulbe, who spoke with ANI on Friday morning. That being said, he did inform that the cracks had been fixed since.
Rescue operations are anticipated to resume soon, according to the former PMO advisor, after the 25-tonne platform, which holds the massive American Auger machine, was strengthened with an accelerating agent to speed up the hardening of concrete.
Drilling through the debris horizontally had to be stopped because the platform cracked while the rescue operation was going on Thursday.
“We had to redesign the platform last night in order to accommodate the machine. But according to ground penetration radar operated by Parsons Company, there are no metallic obstacles for the next five meters (inside the tunnel). This implies that when our drilling gets going again, it should go easily. We found two broken pipes when we were clearing the debris,” Khulbe stated, adding that the workers who were trapped might be freed by Friday.
41 laborers were trapped inside the 60-meter section of the under-construction tunnel on the Silkyara side when it collapsed on November 12. The tunnel was being built from Silkyara to Barkot. The 2 km of constructed area in which the workers are imprisoned is finished and includes safety-enhancing concrete work.
