EXPLAINER
Rat miners successfully rescued 41 workers trapped in India’s Uttarakhand tunnel after machinery broke down.
Forty-one construction workers. Seventeen days. The hopes of a nation.
On Tuesday, rescue workers managed to bring India a dose of good news, rescuing 41 men who had been trapped under a collapsed tunnel in India’s Himalayan state of Uttarakhand since November 12.
But after days of trials, it wasn’t just high-tech tools that brought success — a team of so-called rat diggers, practicing a trade that is officially illegal, also proved to be a lifesaver.
This is how workers are saved.
What happened to the Uttarakhand tunnel?
The under-construction Silkyara Bend-Barkot tunnel collapsed in Uttarakhand in the early morning of November 12. Low-paid construction workers, mostly from other northern and eastern Indian states, were subsequently trapped in a 4.5 km (3 mi) space underground.
The tunnel was part of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious $1.5 million Char Dham pilgrimage program, which aims to connect four Hindu places of worship.
Authorities have not confirmed the exact cause of the tunnel’s collapse, but the region is prone to landslides, earthquakes and floods. Geologist CP Rajendran told Al Jazeera that the Himalayan terrain contains highly brittle rock and is “constantly plagued by stability problems”.
The tunnel also had no emergency exits and was built through a geological fault, a member of a panel of experts investigating the disaster told Reuters.
How did the rescue go?
Although contact was made with the men in the tunnel a day after the collapse, rescue operations faced several obstacles that delayed the process.
Excavator crews deployed heavy auger machines to dig both vertically and horizontally through the debris. The first drilling rig broke down after getting stuck, halting the operation until a second rig was brought in. However, after drilling horizontally through about three-quarters of the debris, the second machine also failed.
Six miners from central India were then tasked with drilling through the remaining rock with hand drills late Monday, using a technique known as rat mining.
In an effort that took more than 24 hours, the miners worked in two teams of three each, with one person drilling, the second collecting the debris and the third pushing it out of the pipe.
The rescue was successful on Tuesday evening when all the workers were removed from the tunnel as they were carried by rescuers on stretchers through a 90 cm (3 ft) wide steel pipe.
“When we saw them inside the tunnel after the breakthrough, we hugged them like they were family,” said Nasir Hussain, one of the six miners.
The hand-drilling technique that finally saved the workers is known as rat digging.
What is rat burrowing?
Rat digging or rat hole digging is the process of excavating a narrow tunnel by digging by hand.
The technique gets its name from its resemblance to rats digging holes in the ground. The practice is common in the northeastern state of Meghalaya, where pits are usually large enough for workers to climb down and extract thin layers of coal. For this reason, children were usually assigned this work.
The lack of ventilation and safety measures caused controversy in the method, which was banned by an environmental court in 2014.
But the practice persists in the largely unorganized mining sector.
At least 15 miners were killed in one such mine in Meghalaya after being trapped for more than a month in January 2019. Rights groups say between 10,000 and 15,000 died in such mines between 2007 and 2014.
However, some of the miners in the rescue operation said they were trained in Delhi and were not miners.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami met some of the workers before they were taken to hospital, presenting them with traditional marigold garlands. Ambulances and helicopters were on standby at the tunnel entrance. Candy was distributed and firecrackers were set off to celebrate.
Despite the availability of ambulances for the construction workers, “Their condition is first class and absolutely fine … just like yours or mine. There is no tension about their health,” said Wakil Hasan, head of the rescue team.
