Sixteen days after 41 workers were trapped inside the Silkyara-Barkot tunnel in Uttarakhand's Uttarkashi, all workers were evacuated on Tuesday evening.
Around 40 minutes after the first worker was evacuated, Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari announced on Twitter that all 41 workers had been evacuated.
The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) personnel evacuated the workers through the pipes inserted through the debris. Earlier in the day, the authorities said the manual horizontal drilling was going on for the final two metres of debris. As the 'rat miners' drilled through the final stretch of the debris, pipes were being pushed into the passage cleared by the miners. After the pipes were inserted, workers were extracted one-by-one.
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While an auger machine carried out much of the drilling, the final stretch of 10-12 metres of debris was cleared manually by a team of 'rat hole' miners. The manual drilling was adopted after the machine broke down and any further mechanical drilling was ruled out. Separately, vertical drilling was also being carried out as a back-up approach. As a second back-up approach, horizontal drilling was also being done from the other end of the tunnel at Barkot.
On November 12, a part of the under-construction Silkyara-Barkot tunnel in Uttarkashi caved in and trapped 41 workers. The tunnel is part of the Char Dham Project, which has been flagged over environmental concerns over the years, owing to the fragility of the Himalayan geology. The workers were trapped inside a 2-km stretch of the under-construction tunnel. They had access to water and the area was well-lit as electricity connections did not snap when the incident happened. Through pipes, they were also provided with food and oxygen was also being pumped.
