From Le Figaro with AFP
Published 2 hours ago, updated 2 hours ago
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At the end of an interminable wait, workers were freed Tuesday evening using stretchers pulled along a 57-meter-long pipe whose installation encountered numerous technical difficulties.
The day after their difficult rescue from the tunnel in which they were trapped for 17 days in the Indian Himalayas, workers on Wednesday, November 29, testified about the “fear” that inhabited them during the ordeal.
Despite assurances from rescuers who worked tirelessly to build an evacuation line, “we didn’t know if we would get out alive,” one of them, Deepak Kumar, told AFP. “We were very afraid, at every moment we felt that death was near,” added the young man a few hours after he was rescued with his 40 colleagues from the collapsed Silkyara tunnel in northern India.
The concern of loved ones
At the end of an interminable wait, workers were freed Tuesday evening using stretchers pulled along a 57-meter-long pipe whose installation encountered numerous technical difficulties.
“The world is beautiful again,” shouted Sabah Ahmad, who, like his colleagues, was celebrated as a hero at the end of this operation that had the entire country in suspense. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made this rescue a national priority. The fear for their survival was compounded by the pain of knowing that their loved ones were consumed with worry, the rescued workers emphasize. “It was hard for the people inside and even harder for the families outside,” summarizes Sabah Ahmad.
Like his colleagues, he was able to talk to his loved ones from the floor of the tunnel thanks to the installation of a communication system. He felt that his wife was “worried and distressed.” But in the end, “we all made it, and that’s all that matters,” he remembers.
“New life”
The 41 workers were flown to a hospital on Wednesday for a full health check before they were allowed to return home. Authorities said they would pay them $1,200 in compensation, equivalent to nearly six months’ salary.
Reached by phone in Bihar, a poor region a thousand kilometers from the accident site and where Sabah Ahmad is from, his wife Musarrat Jahan told AFP she had “no words” to express her joy at seeing her husband off to know the danger zone. “Not only did my husband get a new life, but we all got a new life,” she cheers.
The structure under construction in the state of Uttarakhand collapsed on November 12 while 41 workers were working on it, without causing any injuries. For Subodh Kumar Verma, the first 24 hours were the most stressful as the workers feared suffocation or starvation.
These concerns were quickly dispelled as rescuers were able to transport oxygen, food, electricity and then communications via pipes. “When we got food through the pipes, things got better,” says Subodh Kumar Verma.
“I really felt like I would never see her again”
But as the setbacks mounted, discouragement prevailed. “After three or four days in the tunnel, when the rescue team could not reach us, our confidence was actually low,” says Subodh Kumar Verma.
He was also able to talk to his loved ones while he was trapped. “I told my family, ‘I’m fine, I’m in good shape, don’t worry, everything will be fine, we’ll go out soon,'” he says. “But while I was saying that, sometimes I really felt like I would never see her again.”
The rescue finally took place on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday when rescuers made the diversion inside the narrow canal. “Knight in miner’s uniform,” the major daily Times of India praised her.
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