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After the removal of major obstacles in the Plan A of the Silkyara tunnel rescue, the Army has started manual drilling at the site where the auger drilling machine was building a tunnel before it broke down and failed on Saturday night.
Forty-one workers trapped in the under-construction Silkyara-Barkot tunnel await their rescue as the six-pronged operation enters its 15th day.
A statement by the road transport and highways ministry said the auger was fully pulled out at 3 am on Monday night.
“After visual inspection by welders it is found that the cutter of augur has been entangled with lattice girder bars that damaged the 1.5 metres of length of 800 milimitre passage pipe. Further, cutting of these lattice bars is under progress,” the statement, which had updates till 1:30 p.m on Monday.
"After clearance of 800 mm rescue pipe from all the obstruction, including stuck-up augurs, manual drift procedure will be applied to clear the last few metres to access the other side," it said.
At the press conference on the rescue efforts, National Disaster Management Authority member Lt Gen (retd) Syed Ata Hasnain on Monday evening said the last 15 metres of horizontal drilling are appearing to be tough as the first 47 metres had few obstacles, but a “concentrated” volume of lattice bars and concrete was being found in the last stretch, complicating the operation.
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Even if a new auger machine is available, the operation is likely to continue with the manual drilling method as another such breakdown, and the subsequent cutting and pulling out exercise, may cost the evacuation another couple of days.
Hasnain refused to give an official deadline as there was no estimate of the challenges in the form of more iron and cement going forward in the debris.
Officials neither denied nor confirmed the questions if manual drilling would take another 15-20 days.
Meanwhile, the IMD has issued a yellow alert for the area, predicting light rain in 24-48 hours. Hasnaid said the rain was not likely to impact the operations.
Senior officials from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), including Principal Secretary to PM P K Mishra, and Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla also inspected the rescue efforts at the site on Monday.
Mishra told the rescue team to expedite the evacuation as there would be tougher challenges.
Additionally, the vertical drilling exercise by Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam also made progress over the past 24 hours, and 32 of the 86 metres of vertical drilling has been completed.
The area of entrapment, measuring 8.5 metres in height and 2 kms in length, is the built-up portion of the tunnel, offering safety to the labourers with available electricity and water supply.
According to official data, 15 of the 41 trapped workers belong to Jharkhand, eight are from Uttar Pradesh, five each are from Odisha and Bihar, and the rest are from Assam, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Himachal Pradesh.
On November 12, the tunnel designed to connect the road to Barkot town collapsed as debris fell in a 60-metre stretch on the Silkyara end. Rescue teams at first opted for a 900 mm pipe through the rubble, but safety concerns led them to explore alternative approaches simultaneously.
