After numerous setbacks, Indian military engineers were getting ready to excavate by hand on Monday in an attempt to rescue 41 workers who had been stuck in a collapsed road tunnel for 16 days.
Underneath the snow-capped peaks of Uttarakhand in the Himalayan state, soldiers intend to adopt a method known as “rat-hole mining,” excavating by hand to remove the remaining nine meters (29 feet) of rocks and debris.
Last week, engineers working to drive a metal pipe horizontally through 57 metres (187 feet) of rock and concrete ran into metal girders and construction vehicles buried in the earth, snapping a giant earth-boring auger machine.
“The broken parts of the auger (drilling) machine stuck inside the tunnel have been removed,” senior local civil servant Abhishek Ruhela told AFP on Monday, after a specialised superheated plasma cutter was brought in to clear the metal.
“Preparations are being made to start manual drilling work,” he added. “Indian Army engineering battalion personnel, along with other rescue officers, are preparing to do rat-hole mining”.
In the extreme cold, engineers will have to clear the path with hand drills. This is a difficult effort because the pipe is so thin that a man could barely crawl through it.
Chris Cooper, a tunnel expert who is assisting the rescue operations, expressed optimism that the military will be able to excavate.
“It depends on how the ground behaves,” he told reporters, saying they may yet have to cut through heavy-duty girders that had been meant to hold the collapsed roof up. “We are confident that we can overcome it”.
