Uttarkashi tunnel: Trapped workers pop up on probe camera, rescue route still unclear

Live video feed beamed on a laptop screen inside a control room near the tunnel showed the workers milling around the camera as the rescuers told them to smile and assured them that they would be brought out safely soon

Visual of a worker trapped inside the tunnel in Uttarkashi on Tuesday.: PTI picture

Piyush Srivastava, TT, Lucknow, 22.11.23 : Rescuers sent a flexible endoscopic camera through a pipe in the Uttarkashi tunnel to see and speak to the 41 workers trapped for 10 days following a landslide-induced cave-in.

Live video feed beamed on a laptop screen inside a control room near the tunnel showed the workers milling around the camera as the rescuers told them to smile and assured them that they would be brought out safely soon. The workers can be seen, not heard, in video clips available on social media.

“If all of you are okay, then show yourselves to the camera and raise your hands and smile as we are going to reach you very soon. Don’t panic,” someone in front of the laptop screen inside the temporary control room and controlling the movement of the camera through remote control is heard telling the trapped workers. Some of the workers put their heads to the mouth of the newly laid 6-inch pipe for a close-up view to be beamed to the outside world.

As the voice from the control room instructs the workers to take the camera out of the pipe and show all the workers, one of the trapped labourers puts his hand into the pipe and brings out the device, giving a wider view of the tunnel.

In a 2.24-minute video uploaded on X by Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, two of the labourers are seen holding walkie-talkies. Local officials said they had sent chargers through the pipes for the communication devices to be recharged.

Dhami wrote in Hindi: “The workers trapped inside the under-construction tunnel in Silkyara, Uttarkashi, were reached for the first time with an endoscopic camera and asked them about their wellbeing. All the worker-brothers are absolutely safe.”

The starting time of the video recording seen on the screen is 03:45:46, 21-11-2023. The person monitoring the camera and watching the labourers on the laptop asks them to clean the screen of the camera and the mouth of the pipe. One labourer does so.

“We are pulling back the camera,” the voice from the control room says in the end.

In another video of 5.39 minutes, which was shared by the rescuers with the media, the labourers are seen receiving liquid food in plastic bottles. Officials of the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited said khichri and fruit juice were sent to the labourers in the bottles through the new pipe, which was pushed inside through the upper layer of the debris.

The pipe is 10ft above the area through which steel pipes of 900mm diameter are being drilled through the debris one after the other to create a passage for the trapped labourers to crawl out. However, only 24 metres of the 57-metre stretch of debris have been cleared so far as work is stuck for over three days after a heavy-duty machine airlifted from Delhi developed a snag on Friday night.

A state government media release said on Tuesday that the snag had been repaired and rescuers would resume work soon.

However, nobody is in a position to say when this operation will conclude.

“Forty-one men are coming home, but when that we don’t know. They are coming out some day between Diwali and Christmas,” Arnold Dix, an Australian engineer who arrived in Uttarkashi on Monday to help the rescue teams, told reporters near the mouth of the tunnel on Tuesday.

Dix suggested they harboured no immediate hope of bringing the labourers out as it could take even a month. “It is a good morning today…. But I don’t know when these men would be out. My plan is to sing Christmas carol (back home after the rescue is over),” he said.

Dix said horizontal drilling was the “best and the fastest way but it has its own technical difficulties”.

“I am going to see it again today. But at the same time, we are working on multiple options,” he added.

At present, rescuers are trying to reach the labourers from four directions. According to the Uttarakhand State Disaster Management Authority, a stretch of road was built by the Border Roads Organisation on the mountain for Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd to drill a vertical hole into the tunnel. The BRO is laying another road of 6km from the Barkot side for the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation to make a perpendicular passage from above to the spot where the labourers are trapped.

A third passage, also perpendicular, is being planned from the Silkyara side for which a platform has been built by the public works department. A fourth heavy-duty drill machine has been brought from Nasik — after three from Delhi, Indore and Gujarat — and is being ferried to the spot from Dehradun.

THDC India Ltd has deployed machinery to make the 483m perpendicular escape route from the Barkot side. Two blasts were carried out on the mountain to remove some rocks before the work starts.

Speaking to The Telegraph over phone, district disaster management officer of Uttarkashi Devendra Patwal said: “The rescuers have many plans and are working on four of them, including vertical drilling through the mountain to reach the stranded labourers. This is being done after the 900mm-diameter pipes that were being drilled horizontally through the debris met a hurdle.”

However, sources said on Tuesday late afternoon that drilling for none of the three new plans had started.

“We will start (vertical drilling) once the sites are prepared because the alignment has to be very accurate. You might have seen me climbing the mountain to check the rocks. It is perfect but it has to be done very accurately,” Dix said.

Chief minister Dhami wrote on X: “Respected Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji again took information on phone about the relief and rescue works for the workers trapped in an under-construction tunnel in Silkaya, Uttarkashi. I informed the Hon’ble Prime Minister about the successful insertion of a pipe of six inches through the rubble to send food and other items to the workers.”

“The Prime Minister has said saving the lives of the labourers is our highest priority,” Dhami added.