Indian military engineers prepared on Monday to dig by hand to reach 41 workers trapped for 16 days in a collapsed road tunnel in northern India after rescue operations suffered several setbacks.
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Only nine meters remained to drill through the rubble and insert the final pieces of a 57-meter-long steel pipe, just wide enough for a man to fit through and allow workers to evacuate.
But while drilling, they encountered a tangle of metal rods and construction vehicles blocking the path, causing irreparable damage to the machine being used.
Indian soldiers will try to clear rocks and debris from these remaining nine meters on Monday as temperatures plummet in this remote mountainous region of the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand.
“The personnel of the Indian Army’s engineer battalion as well as other rescuers are preparing for this operation,” a senior local official, Abhishek Ruhela, told AFP on Monday.
In freezing temperatures, engineers use hand drills to clear a route, a difficult task in the narrow pipe that is just wide enough for a man to crawl through.
Since the tunnel collapsed on Nov. 12, rescue efforts have been complicated and slowed by falling debris and repeated failures of drills, critical machinery used to rescue workers.
Thanks to the supply of air, food, water and electricity via a pipe through which an endoscopic camera was inserted, these men have been surviving for two weeks. With this camera, their families were able to see them last week for the first time since the tunnel collapsed.