By Saurabh Sharma
LUCKNOW, India (Reuters) – Heavy machinery started drilling to fix a wide steel pipe on Tuesday in an effort to rescue nearly 40 Indian workers trapped inside a collapsed Himalayan highway tunnel in the north Indian state of Uttarakhand.
The 4.5-km (3-mile) tunnel, part of a popular Hindu pilgrimage route, collapsed around 5:30 a.m. on Sunday.
“We have been supplying food, water and oxygen to the trapped laborers, and officials are in continuous touch with all of them,” said Devendra Singh Patwal, a disaster management official.
Excavators have been removing debris for two days to create a path to reach the workers and had been awaiting delivery of a wide steel pipe to safely pull out the workers.
Patwal said it was not easy to ascertain the time required to pull out the workers.
A team of geologists had arrived to determine the cause of the accident.
A construction worker who made it out safely explained, “Initially, we thought it might be a minor collapse and began removing the debris however we could. But soon, we realized it was a challenging search and rescue (mission).”
The region is prone to landslides, earthquakes, and floods, and the incident follows events of land subsidence in the state that geologists, residents, and officials have blamed on rapid construction in the mountains.
The work on the tunnel stretch commenced in 2018 and was initially intended to be completed by July 2022, which has now been delayed to May 2024, an Indian government statement said.
CONTROVERSIAL PROJECT
The Char Dham pilgrimage route is one of the most ambitious projects of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. It aims to connect four important Hindu pilgrimage sites of North India through 889 km (551 miles) of two-lane road being built at a cost of $1.5 billion.
But some work has been halted by local authorities after hundreds of houses were damaged by subsidence along the routes, including in Uttarakhand.
The project has faced criticism from environmental experts.
When it approved the Char Dham road in 2021, the Supreme Court said wider roads would be beneficial for the defense of India’s borders. It cautioned, however, that the government should heed concerns raised by the committee and draw up a concrete strategy to protect the environment.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on Tuesday told ANI news agency that the state would examine work at all tunnels under construction to ensure they are completed safely and authorities are better prepared to face possible emergencies.
(Reporting by Saurabh Sharma in Lucknow and Tanvi Mehta in New Delhi; Editing by YP Rajesh, Stephen Coates and Shri Navaratnam)
