Four dead, three missing as rain continues to batter Kerala
Around 95 houses were partially damaged and another 100 got waterlogged due to sea erosion in Kozhikode.
The rescue team on Tuesday successfully evacuated 17 out of the 41 trapped workers from the Silkyara-Barkot tunnel in Uttarakhand , officials said.
“17 workers have been successfully evacuated and now it is just a matter of time that others are taken out. The escape passage is smooth now and without any hurdles,” a member of the rescue team said.
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Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami met the rescued workers and expressed happiness over the development. “The work of evacuating the labourers trapped in the Silkyara Tunnel has started. So far 8 workers have been rescued. Initial health checkup of all the workers is being done in the temporary medical camp built in the tunnel.” tweets Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami
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Experts, personnel from the NDRF and SDRF, government officials and others have employed many measures to reach the workers who have been trapped since the last 17 days.
“We finally reached a breakthrough at 7 pm. We expect to get the workers out by 9.30 pm,” said an official of the rescue team.
Meanwhile, the state government has deployed ambulances and other medical teams at the accident site for any exigency.
“The last pipe has been pushed inside the debris to complete the escape passage work. The pipe was welded and the debris muck was removed from the passage manually,” Additional Secretary, MoRTH, Mehmood Ahmed said after coming out of the tunnel in the morning where rat miners were working incessantly to drill the escape passage.
Portions of the tunnel had collapsed following a landslide on November 12, leaving the workers trapped behind a huge mound of debris. The tunnel, about 30 km from the district headquarters of Uttarkashi and a seven-hour drive from Dehradun, is part of the Char Dham all-weather road project of the central government.
Uttarakhand secretary Neeraj Khairwal said mock drills and detailed discussions are on with all other agencies engaged in the rescue work to finalize the standard operation process (SoP) for evacuating the trapped workers.
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