India/Gauchar, India:
Wet weather expected on Monday could lead to more complications in the rescue of 41 construction workers trapped in a tunnel in the Indian Himalayas for more than two weeks, but rescue leaders said they were prepared to deal with it.
Workers from some of India’s poorest states have been trapped after a 4.5 km (3 mi) long tunnel in Uttarakhand state collapsed on November 12.
Bad weather was coming with the threat of storms, hail and low temperatures in the mountains but rescue organizers said they could handle it.
Referring to the rescue teams, Mahmood Ahmed, managing director of NHIDCL, the company that is building the tunnel and helping in the rescue operation, said, “They are trained to work in every situation, so it is our There is nothing to worry about.”
The 41 trapped people are getting food, water, light, oxygen and medicines through a narrow pipe, but efforts to dig a tunnel to get them out are facing several hurdles.
Rescue workers trying to tunnel horizontally through the rocks trapping people are frustrated by damage to their machinery and are resorting to hand drilling after removing broken equipment.
Reading Possibility of manual drilling in the last phase to rescue stranded workers.
On Sunday, he opened another way for the men, with the goal of drilling a shaft directly down from the top of the mountain above them to get them out.
“There will be difficulties, there have been difficulties, but we are prepared for it,” said Jaswant Kapoor, general manager of SJVNL Drilling Company, which is in charge of the new shaft.
Along with thunderstorms and hailstorm, cold weather is setting in and the minimum temperature is expected to be 9 °C (48.2 °F) on Monday.
The tunnel is part of the Char Dham Highway, one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s most ambitious projects, which aims to connect the four Hindu pilgrimage sites through an 890-km-long road.
Authorities have not said what initially caused the men to become trapped in the cave-in as they were nearing the end of their night shift, but the area is prone to landslides, earthquakes and flooding.
