All 41 Indian workers rescued from collapsed tunnel

This is what happened at a tunnel construction site in the Himalayas of northern India Tuesday night. Rescuers and family members cheered, "Bharat Mata ki Jai (Long live Mother India)!" as a man in a yellow safety helmet emerged from a narrow steel pipe about 90 centimeters in diameter. It was the first time in 17 days that the workers, who had been trapped after the ceiling collapsed while working on a highway tunnel, could get outside. All 41 workers trapped in the tunnel were rescued safely within an hour.

According to news outlets including The Associated Press, a landslide caused the tunnel ceiling to collapse at the Silkyara tunnel construction site in Uttarakhand, northern India. The workers were trapped about 200 meters from the tunnel’s entrance. Their survival was confirmed 10 days after the accident. On Nov. 21, rescuers managed to cut a hole elsewhere around the entrance and insert a medical endoscopic camera through the pile of rubble as thick as 60 meters. Fortunately, it was revealed the entire crew survived. The rescuers used this route to run pipes to reach the men's isolated point, and supplied them with oxygen, water, food, and medication. Twelve doctors waited outside the tunnel to check on the men.

The rescuers' next move was to push a steel pipe, about 90 centimeters in diameter, through the 60-meter-thick rubble. The intention was that the workers would be able to squeeze the trapped workers into the tube and get out. A large drill was deployed to do this, but the metal and rocks in the rubble caused the drill to break down several times. They were unable to go any further than a few meters from the location where the workers were trapped. Some 20 rescuers dug through the rubble by hand to create a hole last Friday, and a steel pipe finally reached the workers on Tuesday afternoon. Rescuers loaded the workers onto wheeled stretchers and carried them out one by one.

"The trapped workers were so happy when they found us in the tunnel,” a rescuer told an Indian broadcaster. “Some of them ran to me and hugged me." The 41 workers were taken to a nearby hospital as soon as they came out. They are reportedly in good health.


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