OAN’s James Meyers
9:25 AM – Monday, November 27, 2023
Authorities in India have announced they will begin manual digging in hopes to rescue 41 construction workers who have been trapped in a tunnel for over two weeks.
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According to officials, rescuers have begun to start drilling vertically on Monday, which is an alternate plan to digging horizontally from the front using a newly replaced drilling machine to hollow out almost 105 feet.
Devendra Patwal, a disaster management official at the site, said he is hopeful and ready to face different challenges.
“We don’t know what the drilling machine will have to cut through. It could be loose soil or rocks. But we are prepared,” he said.
Meanwhile, since the workers have been trapped, rescuers have excavated and inserted pipes up to 150 feet inside the tunnel, which was welded together in hopes to make a passageway for the workers to be pulled out on wheeled stretchers.
The drilling machine used to make a passageway broke down on Friday as rescuers worked overnight pulling out parts of the drilling machine stuck inside the pipes to begin manual digging, according to Patwal.
The rescue attempt comes after workers have been trapped since November 12th after a landslide in Uttarakhand state caused a portion of the almost three mile tunnel they were building collapsed 650 feet from the entrance.
A majority of the trapped workers are migrant laborers from across India. Family members of the trapped workers have traveled to the area and have camped out for days in hopes to get updates to the rescue efforts.
Arnold Dix, an international expert assisting the rescuing team, told the local media that he expects the workers to be reunited with their families by Christmas time.
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By: OAN
