The long wait of 41 workers trapped inside the Silkyara-Barkot tunnel in Uttarakhand ended on Tuesday as they were successfully evacuated by the meticulous planning of the rescue personnel.
According to officials, the first three workers were brought out on specially modified stretchers. These were lowered manually down a two-metre-wide pipe inserted into holes drilled into the hillside.
“We have been able to successfully evacuate all the trapped workers thanks to the brilliant rescue team,” an official said.
Taking to social media, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami earlier said, ” 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.”
The ambulances – there are 41, one for each worker – will be provided a ‘green corridor’ to reach emergency medical facilities set up in Chinyalisaur, which is around 30 km away.
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.
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.