Exhausted but smiling brightly, the 41 workers rescued by Indian rescuers on Tuesday after being trapped in the collapsed Silkyara tunnel for 17 days were given a hero’s welcome with flower garlands by a cheering crowd.
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“Hello, Mother India!” she shouted as night fell, clapping as news spread that all these men had escaped safely since part of the structure under construction in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand collapsed on November 12 could.
They were freed from the tunnel after being dragged on specially wheeled stretchers through 57 meters of steel pipe, the final section of which was laid during the day.
AFP
At the same time, ambulances left the entrance to the site, where military engineers and miners, after repeated setbacks, manually drilled through rock and rubble to clear the final section and reach the trapped workers.
Before they could hug their families, they were greeted by state representatives.
“I am completely relieved and happy that 41 workers trapped in the Silkyara Tunnel collapse have been rescued,” said Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, who praised “well-coordinated efforts” that made “one of the most important rescue operations in history” possible have had in recent years.
“Now it’s time to party!”
Their relatives expressed joy and relief after earlier hopes of reaching the men were repeatedly dashed by falling debris and the breakdown of several drilling machines.
AFP
“We thank God and the rescuers who worked hard to save them,” Naiyer Ahmad, whose younger brother Sabah Ahmad was among the workers and who had been camping at the site in freezing cold for more than two weeks, told AFP.
Sudhansu Shah, who was also there awaiting the release of his younger brother Sonu Shah, admitted that he and his family had started celebrating the end of his ordeal. “We’re really hopeful and happy.”
“We are extremely happy, there are no words to express it,” Musarrat Jahan, the wife of one of the rescued men, exclaimed to AFP by telephone in Bihar state.
AFP
“Not only did my husband have a new life, but we also had a new life. We will never forget it.”
Their “courage and patience inspire all,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi responded in a statement, speaking of the 41 survivors.
“Patience, hard work and faith have prevailed,” said Uttarakhand state Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, citing “the prayers of tens of millions of compatriots and the tireless work of all rescue teams.”
The health condition of the rescued workers was “good,” he added.
Guriya Devi, wife of Sushil Kumar, one of them, said she had been praying since the tunnel collapsed.
“We’ve been through some terrible times and sometimes we’ve lost hope, but ultimately it’s time to celebrate,” she said.
A gigantic job
Teams of three people took turns digging up and pocketing the final pieces of steel pipe, just wide enough to allow one man to pass through and evacuate workers.
As one of the rescuers dug, a second removed the debris by hand and the third placed it in a cart that reached the exit, said Rajput Rai, a drilling expert, quoted by the Press Trust of India agency on Tuesday.
The men also had to cut through a tangle of metal bars that blocked their path.
After the tunnel collapsed, rescue efforts were complicated and slowed by falling debris and repeated failures of drills, the machinery critical to rescuing workers.
Another vertical drilling had also begun from the top of the wooded hill overlooking the tunnel, a complex maneuver above the men in an area that had already collapsed.
The men had survived for more than two weeks thanks to air, food, water and electricity supplied through a pipe through which an endoscopic camera had been inserted. With this camera, their families were able to see them for the first time last week.
Indian billionaire Anand Mahindra paid tribute to the men who squeezed through the narrow steel pipe to manually clear away the stones. “It’s a reassuring reminder that heroism is ultimately mostly about individual effort and sacrifice,” he wrote on social network X.
The workers were trapped in an 8.5 meter high and approximately two kilometer long area within the tunnel.
The Silkyara Tunnel is part of the Char Dham Highway project close to Narendra Modi’s heart, which aims to improve connectivity to four of the country’s most important Hindu sites and also to China’s border regions.