The drama surrounding construction workers in India who were trapped in a collapsed road tunnel for almost two weeks continues. After another setback in the attempt to reach the 41 trapped people horizontally, rescue teams returned to working hard today on other solutions.
Yesterday, rescue teams encountered obstacles again as they drilled through the rubble of the collapsed tunnel: just nine meters before reaching the trapped men, the huge special drill found thick metal beams and buried construction vehicles.
According to Australian tunnel expert Arnold Dix, who supports the work, the broken drill can no longer be repaired: it will now be recovered. However, rescuers still hoped to be able to rescue the construction workers using a narrow steel tube as a rescue tunnel.
At the same time, other crews took a heavy excavator up the wooded hill above the tunnel to drill a 300-foot-deep shaft to the trapped people. However, the work above the heads of the 41 construction workers is complex and dangerous. A new rescue shaft has also begun to be excavated at the other end of the tunnel. However, at an estimated 480 meters, this route would be significantly longer than the other two options.
Chief Minister of the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, Pushkar Singh Dhami, said today that authorities and international experts are working on all options. Either way, “we will soon be able to safely recover our brothers,” he said.