SILKYARA, India, Nov 28 (Portal) – When heavy machinery broke down while trying to break through the rubble trapping 41 workers in a tunnel in India’s Himalayas, authorities called in a group of people whose jobs are in the country is practically forbidden – “rat”. -Hole removal”.
While drilling machines managed to drill through nearly three-quarters of the rubble horizontally, it fell to half a dozen miners on Tuesday who were adept at digging into tight spaces to reach trapped workers.
Rescuers successfully pulled the workers out on rolling stretchers through a wide pipe pushed through the rubble after a 17-day ordeal.
“It was a difficult task, but nothing is difficult for us,” said a beaming Firoz Qureshi, one of the miners, standing outside the tunnel with his colleagues, their faces covered in white dust after overnight drilling.
The “rat miners” began work late Monday after a second drill also failed and there was still 15 of 60 meters left to reach the trapped men.
They worked in two teams of three, with one person drilling, the second collecting the debris, and the third pushing it out of the pipe.
They said they worked more than 24 hours.
[1/4]Ambulances move inside a tunnel where rescue operations are underway to rescue trapped workers after the tunnel collapsed, in Uttarkashi in the northern state of Uttarakhand, India, November 28, 2023. Portal/Francis Mascarenhas Acquire License Rights
“When we saw them in the tunnel after the breakthrough, we hugged them as if they were family members,” said Nasir Hussain, one of the six miners.
“Rat hole mining” is a dangerous and controversial method that was widely used to mine thin coal seams in the northeastern state of Meghalaya before an environmental court banned the practice in 2014 due to environmental damage and many deaths.
Some of the miners involved in the rescue operation said they were not involved in coal mining and received their training in Delhi.
The name comes from its resemblance to rats that dig pits in the ground. The pits are just large enough for workers, often children, to descend using ropes or ladders to mine coal – often without safety measures or adequate ventilation.
At least 15 miners were killed in one such “rat hole” mine in Meghalaya after being trapped there for more than a month through January 2019 – one of many tragedies in the state where human rights organizations say 10,000 to 15,000 people died between 2007 died in such mines and 2014.
The practice became illegal in the 1970s when India nationalized coal mines, giving state-owned Coal India a monopoly.
Nevertheless, many small mine owners continued to employ small men or children to mine coal illegally, and the federal government did not intervene given the state’s remote location and the low quality of its coal.
Reporting by Saurabh Sharma in Silkyara and Shivam Patel in New Delhi, Editing by Angus MacSwan
Our standards: The Thomson Portal Trust Principles.
Acquire license rights, opens new tab