Doctors and ambulances have been put on standby outside the collapsed Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhand's Uttarkashi district where 41 workers have been trapped for the past eleven days. Officials had earlier expected the rescue mission to be completed by Thursday early morning. However, an iron mesh that had come in the path of the drilling machine creating an escape passage for the workers delayed the rescue operation by 12 to 14 hours.
On Wednesday late evening, the rescue operations hit a hurdle when some iron rods came in the way of the auger machine that was drilling the steel pipes through the rubble. "It took us six hours to remove it. But the good news is that we have cleared the hurdle which came yesterday after drilling up to 45 metres had been done," Former advisor to the prime minister's office Bhaskar Khulbe said.
Now the process of assembling to go beyond 45 metres which requires welding the pipes has been restarted. The drilling will also resume soon, he said. It will take around 12 to 14 hours more to complete the whole operation of reaching the workers. After that, it will take three hours to take out the workers one by one. That will be done with the help of NDRF, Khulbe said.
As the machine drills through, six-metre sections of steel pipes, just under a metre wide, are pushed into the escape passage. Once the pipeway reaches the other end, the trapped workers are expected to crawl out.
All preparations have been made for when the workers are rescued including a team of 15 doctors, including chest specialists and twelve ambulances that are deployed at the site. A special ward to accommodate all evacuated workers was readied at the community health centre in Chinyalisaur. All hospitals in the district as well as AIIMS, Rishikesh are on alert, officials said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami once again on Wednesday morning for updates on the rescue operation. First visuals of the trapped workers were captured early Tuesday with the help of an endoscopic camera sent through the new six-inch pipeline.
