As the first visuals of the 41 workers trapped inside the Silkyara tunnel emerged ON Tuesday, officials said the focus of the multiple-agency rescue mission remains on digging horizontally through the debris of the collapsed stretch.
However, rescue workers continued to prepare for other options, including drilling from above the tunnel, to reach the workers trapped inside for nine days.
Horizontal drilling through the debris was put on hold last Friday afternoon after the heavy duty auger machine encountered a hard boulder, making rescue agency consider other approaches as well.
But on Tuesday, remarks by National Disaster Management Authority member Lt General (retd) Syed Ata Hasnain, Road Transport and Highways secretary Anurag Jain and Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami made it clear that resuming the operation was the main priority.
At the disaster site in Uttarakhand’s Uttarkashi district, a video clip captured by an endoscopic camera sent in through a new six-inch wide pipeline brought hope to relatives who are camping there for days. The pipeline was pushed late Monday through 53 metres of debris, the collapsed stretch of the under-construction tunnel on the Char Dham route.
In the video released by the rescue agencies, the workers wearing yellow and white helmets are seen receiving food items sent to them through the pipeline and talking to each other.
Officials watching them on a screen are heard giving instructions, asking them to clean the lens. The workers are told to come near the camera and use walkie-talkies, apparently sent down earlier.
The camera is then pulled back up so that water can be released under pressure to clean the pipeline.
Relatives have talked earlier to the trapped workers through the four-inch compressor tube that already existed. Food items like dry fruit were also being sent through that thinner pipe.
But the new “lifeline” has come as a morale booster. Communication is much better and larger quantities of food can now be sent in.
“I talked to him this morning,” Sunita Hembrum, whose brother-in-law Pradeep Kisku is among the trapped labourers, told PTI. She has come to Silkyara from Banka in Bihar.
“Oranges have been supplied to them through the new food pipe. Efforts are also underway to send khichdi to them. He was fine,” she said.