Indian Workers Rescued

Days after the rescue of 41 workers trapped in the Silkyara tunnel due to a partial collapse, an official on Friday said that minor to medium-level collapses occur at any tunnel project normally and these are corrected during the construction. A rescue team on Tuesday pulled out all 41 workers trapped due to the collapse of a portion, around 200 metres from the entrance, of the under-construction Silkyara tunnel in a multi-agency operation that hovered between hope and despair for almost 17 days. The 4.5 kilometres long Silkyara tunnel project in Uttarakhand, which is part of the central government's strategic 900-km 'Char Dham Yatra All Weather Road' aims to provide all-weather connectivity to four holy towns of Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath in Uttarakhand. "Whenever any tunnel is being built, minor to medium-level collapse of the tunnel is a normal occurrence. We keep correcting it as and when it happens," National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation

After facing numerous obstacles in the past two and a half weeks, the operations were completed following a coordinated push by Army engineers and rat-hole miners

"This is a war, and the enemy is Himalayan geology," National Disaster Management Authority member Syed Ata Hasnain told reporters earlier this week

Auger parts being pulled out to rescue 41 tunnel workers

"The auger will move extremely carefully," Hasnain said

Workers to be rescued 'by any means': NDMA officials said on Silkyara tunnel mishap

Rescue workers were set to begin drilling at the collapsed Silkyara tunnel Friday after putting it on hold for several hours, following a snag that delayed the operation to evacuate 41 men trapped inside for 12 days, officials said. Officials, at an afternoon news briefing, said that the technical problem that stalled the drilling on Wednesday had been set right, and the operation would begin in the next couple of hours. The boring would resume after the another section of steel pipes is welded to the chute already pushed through, they said. A ground penetrating radar has indicated that there are no metal hurdles up to five metres ahead of the passage bored through the debris of the tunnel's collapsed portion. There is no technical problem with the auger machine, but the rescue workers needed to strengthen the platform on which it is mounted, the officials said. The machine had drilled up to 48 metres in the rubble to create the escape passage. The steel pipe -- the pathway to ...

From 22 metres, the pipe had reached 45 metres till Wednesday night, but the auger machine had to temporarily halt operations after an iron girder was encountered by authorities at the site

In tricky terrain, govt has adopted 5-pronged bid to rescue 41 men in Uttarkashi

The government on Tuesday issued an advisory to private television channels, asking them to refrain from sensationalising the coverage of the rescue operations at Silkyara in Uttarakhand, where 41 workers are trapped inside a tunnel for 10 days. The advisory, issued by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, also told private television channels to be sensitive in their reportage, especially while putting out headlines and videos of the rescue operations, considering the psychological status of family members of the trapped workers. "Telecast of video footage and other pictures relating to the operations by the TV channels specially by placing cameras and other equipment in close proximity of the rescue operations site have the potential to adversely affect the ongoing operations," the advisory said. It also advised the channels to refrain from sensationalizing the issue and from undertaking any live posts or videos from close proximity of the tunnel site where the rescue ...

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