Rescuers have begun vertical drilling to create an escape route for the 41 workers trapped inside the collapsed tunnel in Uttarakhand’s Silkyara, a day after an auger machine carrying out horizontal drilling broke down and got stuck in the debris.
"Vertical drilling has begun and (a stretch of) up to 15 metres has been drilled already," Mahmood Ahmed, managing director of National Highways Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited, told reporters on Sunday.
"If there are no major obstacles, it will take four days to reach the tunnel through the vertical drilling method," he said.
Ahmed informed that multiple options have been put into action to rescue the workers who have been trapped for the last 14 days after a portion of the tunnel being between Silkyara and Dandalgaon in Uttarkashi district collapsed in the early morning on November 12.
The officer also informed that the machine for sideways drilling is expected to reach the tunnel rescue site during night.
The vertical drilling began a day after authorities said the blades of the augur drilling machine had got stuck in the rubble.
Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami had said manual drilling would begin on Sunday, but for that to happen, a complete disengagement of the machine is necessary.
The removal of the shaft and fins of the auger machine stuck in the debris is underway with plasma and laser cutters inside the tunnel.
“The mountain has again resisted the auger, so we are rethinking our approach...I am confident that the 41 men are coming home by Christmas...I have always promised that the workers will be home by Christmas,” international tunnelling expert Arnold Dix, who has been monitoring the operation, had told reporters on Saturday.
A unit of Madras Sappers, an engineer group of the Corps of Engineers of the Indian Army, has already arrived at the site on Sunday to assist in the rescue operations.
