One day after the road tunnel they were building collapsed, rescue workers in India used powerful excavators on Monday to clear mountains of debris in a desperate attempt to reach 40 men.
Authorities in Uttarakhand, a state in the northern Himalayas, said there were “some signals” that the workers were still alive.
By using a water pipe, the rescuers were able to deliver food into the obstructed section of the tunnel while simultaneously pumping oxygen into it.
“Some small food packets were sent in through a pipe which is also taking oxygen inside,” rescue official Durgesh Rathodi told AFP from the site.
“We have received some signals back that the trapped workers are alive.”
Rathodi said excavators had removed about 20 meters (65 feet) of heavy debris, but the men were 40 metres beyond that point.
Disaster response official Devendra Patwal said he believed the men were likely alive.
“The good thing is that the labourers are not crammed in, and have a buffer of around 400 metres to walk and breathe,” Patwal told the Indian Express newspaper.
The 4.5-kilometre (2.7-mile) tunnel is being constructed between Silkyara and Dandalgaon to connect two of the holiest Hindu shrines of Uttarkashi and Yamnotri.
Photographs released by the government rescue teams showed huge piles of concrete blocking the wide tunnel, with twisted metal bars on its broken roof poking down in front of the rubble.
The tunnel is a component of the Char Dham Road Project, an initiative by Prime Minister Narendra Modi aimed at enhancing connectivity for the nation’s most visited Hindu sites and regions bordering China.
In India, accidents on sizable construction sites for infrastructure are not uncommon.
Experts partially attributed the January flash floods that killed at least 200 people in Uttarakhand, a state with sensitive ecosystems, to overdevelopment.
