SILKYARA TUNNEL, India: Indian military engineers were preparing to dig by hand on Monday (Nov 27) to reach 41 workers trapped in a collapsed road tunnel for 16 days, a rescue operation hit by repeated setbacks.
Soldiers plan to use a so-called “rat-hole mining” technique, digging by hand to clear the rocks and rubble over the remaining 9m, with temperatures plummeting in the remote mountain location in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand.
Last week, engineers working to drive a metal pipe horizontally through 57m of rock and concrete ran into metal girders and construction vehicles buried in the earth, snapping a giant earth-boring augur machine.
“The broken parts of the auger (drilling) machine stuck inside the tunnel have been removed,” senior local civil servant Abhishek Ruhela told AFP on Monday, after a specialised superheated plasma cutter was brought in to clear the metal.
“Preparations are being made to start manual drilling work,” he added. “Indian Army engineering battalion personnel, along with other rescue officers, are preparing to do rat-hole mining.”