Indian army digs by hand to free 41 trapped tunnel workers

SILKYARA TUNNEL, India: Indian military engineers were preparing to dig by hand on Monday 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 nine metres (29 feet), 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 57 metres (187 feet) of rock and concrete ran into metal girders and construction vehicles buried in the earth, snapping a giant earth-boring auger 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”.

Engineers in the bitterly cold conditions will use manual drills to clear the route, a tough task in the narrow pipe, just wide enough for a man to crawl through. Tunnel expert Chris Cooper, who is advising the rescue teams, said he was optimistic the soldiers will be able to dig through.

“It depends on how the ground behaves,” he told reporters, saying they may yet have to cut through heavy-duty girders that had been meant to hold the collapsed roof up. “We are confident that we can overcome it”.