INDIA: On Tuesday, heavy-duty excavators started drilling to repair a broad steel pipe that will aid in the rescue of around forty Indian labourers who were stranded within the collapsed Himalayan highway tunnel in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, which collapsed two days ago.
On a popular Hindu pilgrimage path, the 4.5-kilometer tunnel under construction collapsed at 5:30 a.m. on Sunday, March 2. On a national roadway, construction was underway.
Disaster management official Devendra Singh Patwal stated, “We have been supplying food, water, and oxygen to the trapped labourers and the officials are in continuous touch with all of them.”
According to the government’s highway and infrastructure company, over 100 rescue workers are using heavy machinery to push a steel pipe that is 90 cm (nearly three feet) wide, which is broad enough for the trapped guys to squeeze through the debris.
Extracting individuals from a collapsed tunnel was a challenging task, as Patwal revealed. He further mentioned that a group of geologists from educational and state government agencies had come to ascertain the reason behind the mishap.
The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi was working on a $1.5 billion project called the Char Dham pilgrimage route, which would build an 889-kilometre two-lane road to connect four Hindu pilgrimage sites in North India.
At least 200 people died in 2021, the majority of them construction workers, when a section of a Himalayan glacier came off, catastrophically resulting in flash floods in Uttarakhand.
On Tuesday, Pushkar Singh Dhami, the chief minister of Uttarakhand, announced that the state would inspect all tunnels now under construction to make sure they are finished securely.
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