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A woman devotee carried in a palanquin to Yamunotri temple Uttarkashi Uttarakhand, India. A tunnel is being dug close to the shrine to rescue the 41 trapped men.
- The rescue of 41 men trapped in a tunnel in Northern India for almost two weeks is imminent.
- Rescue efforts have been hampered by mechanical breakdowns and the fear of cave-ins.
- Rescuers have been able to provide the men with food and water through a small pipe.
The rescue operation in northern India to free 41
construction workers who have been trapped in a collapsed tunnel for nearly two
weeks is in the final stages, authorities say.
Atul Karwal, chief of the state-run National Disaster
Response Force (NDRF), told reporters on Thursday that progress was delayed
when a drilling machine was damaged.
“The machine has started operating again in full swing,
so we are hopeful that it will finish early,” Karwal said. “We should
be able to rescue them in today’s date.” The men have been trapped below
ground in the mountainous region of Uttarakhand since 12 November when a
landslide collapsed a section of the 4.5km (2.8-mile) tunnel they were working
on about 200m (656ft) from the entrance.
Rescue efforts to reach the workers have been set back on
several occasions by damaged equipment, fears about cave-ins, and the fragile
geology of the region.
“The region is very weak, tectonically, because there
[are] many earthquakes occurring there. The Himalayas are very fragile, and
it’s not a place where you can just go and put a tunnel,” geologist CP
Rajendran told Al Jazeera.
As of Thursday evening, about 12 metres (40ft) of additional
drilling were left before a passageway could be forged for the workers.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, the state’s
top elected official, visited the site on Thursday and said the rescue teams
plan to insert and weld together pipes that would be the trapped workers’ route
to freedom.
READ | 40 workers trapped in collapsed tunnel between shrines ‘safe’, Indian authorities say
NDRF members “will then crawl inside and bring out the
workers one by one, most likely on stretchers which have been fitted with
wheels,” Karwal said.
“We have put wheels under the stretchers so that when
we go in, we can get the people out one by one on the stretcher. We are
prepared in every way,” he added.
Authorities have said the men are safe and have access to
light, oxygen, food, and water.
Ambulances are ready at the site to evacuate the workers
once they are brought out of the tunnel.
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