The 40 workers trapped Sunday when a road tunnel under construction in northern India collapsed are alive, a rescue official said Monday.
‘All forty workers trapped in the tunnel are still alive’Indian Disaster Response Force Commander Karamveer Singh Bhandari said in a statement, adding that water and food are being sent.
Rescue teams managed to contact the survivors, first through a message on a piece of paper, and later managed to establish communication using radio equipment.
An emergency services official in Uttarakhand state said authorities were pumping oxygen and sending “some small food parcels” through a pipeline into the tunnel.
Durgesh Rathodi added that rescue teams have used excavators to remove about 20 meters of debris, and are currently 40 meters away from the workers.
A police officer, Prashant Kumar, said more than 150 rescuers also used drilling equipment throughout the night to remove debris.
The collapsed section of the 4.5-kilometer-long tunnel is about 200 meters from the entrance, authorities told the Press Trust of India news agency.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, who has already visited the accident site, wrote on the social network
“The positive side is that the employees are not on top of each other and have a buffer space of about 400 meters to walk and breathe”another person in charge of emergency services, Devendra Patwal, told the Indian Express newspaper.
The collapse occurred in the early hours of Sunday, in the Himalayan region, when a group of workers left the shipyard and a replacement team arrived.
The tunnel is part of the Chardham Highway, a flagship project of the Indian federal government under construction between Silkyara and Dandalgaon to connect the two important Hindu shrines of Uttarkashi and Yamnotri in Uttarakhand, a mountainous state that attracts many pilgrims and tourists.
In January, authorities in Uttarakhand moved hundreds of people to temporary shelters after a temple collapsed and cracks appeared in more than 600 homes due to sinking land in and around the city of Joshimath.
Source: DN
