SILKYARA, India, Nov 21 (Reuters) – The first images emerged on Tuesday of 41 men trapped for more than a week in a highway tunnel in the Indian Himalayas, showing them standing in the confined space and communicating with rescue workers as drilling resumed. pull them to a safe place.
The men have been trapped in the 4.5-kilometer (3-mile) tunnel in Uttarakhand state since it collapsed early on Nov. 12 and are safe, authorities said, with access to light, oxygen, food, water and medicine.
They did not say what caused the tunnel to collapse, but the region is prone to landslides, earthquakes and flooding. Efforts to retrieve the 41 men were delayed by setbacks in digging through the debris in the mountainous terrain.
“We may be able to achieve a breakthrough in the next 30-40 hours,” Mahmood Ahmed, managing director of the state-run National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL), which is building the tunnel, told reporters.
“There may be difficulties, but we are prepared for that,” he said after drilling resumed.
A 30-second video released by authorities shows about a dozen of the trapped men standing in a semicircle in front of the camera, wearing construction workers’ hard hats and jackets over their clothes against the backdrop of tunnel lights.
A rescue worker could be heard telling the men to come forward to the camera one by one to confirm their identities on the walkie-talkie equipment that had been sent out.
The video was taken with a medical endoscope camera that was threaded through a second, wider pipeline drilled through the debris on Monday, authorities said.
In the clip, the trapped men appeared to be doing well and responded that they were fine in response to inquiries about their well-being, said a rescue service control room official who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.
A Hindu priest prays at a makeshift temple outside the entrance to a tunnel where workers are trapped after part of the tunnel collapsed in Uttarkashi in the northern state of Uttarakhand, India. REUTERS/Saurabh Sharma acquire licensing rights
Rescuers resumed horizontal drilling into a 60-meter (195-foot) pile of debris to drill a pipe large enough for the trapped men to crawl out, a government statement said.
Drilling was halted on Friday after the rig became stuck and fears of another collapse.
Work on five other plans to retrieve the workers, including vertical drilling from the top of the mountain, is also underway, the statement said.
One vertical rescue machine has arrived and is being installed and two more are waiting, they added.
Abhishek Sharma, a psychiatrist sent to the site by the state government, said he asked the 41 men to walk the 2km (1.2 miles) zone where they are confined, do light yoga exercises and talk regularly each other to keep busy.
“Sleep is very important for them … and at the moment they are sleeping well and are not reporting any sleep problems,” Sharma told Reuters, adding that the men were in good spirits and wanted to show up soon.
The men caught are low-wage workers, most of whom are from India’s impoverished northern and eastern states.
“He said he was doing well,” Sunita Hembrom, the daughter-in-law of one of the workers trapped in the tunnel, Surendra Kishku, told reporters after speaking with him.
“He said, ‘Take care of yourselves, the children and the parents. Just tell us what they’re doing to get us out of here.”
Reporting by Saurabh Sharma in Silkyara; Writing by YP Rajesh; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Sharon Singleton
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