Chinanews.com, November 11 According to Reuters, on the 29th local time, Indian rescuers drilled through rocks, concrete and rubble, rescued 28 workers who had been trapped in a collapsed tunnel in Uttarakhand for 41 days, and took them to safety.
According to reports, on the 12th local time, a tunnel under construction in Uttarakhand, northern India, collapsed, resulting in 41 construction workers being trapped in it. These workers are from one of the poorest states in India.
Image source: Screenshot of the Reuters report
According to the report, the process of rescuers pulling the trapped workers out of the tunnel took about one hour. They were held on wheeled stretchers, on which the trapped people lay in turn, and then were pulled out of a 1-centimeter-wide pipe by rescuers.
Rescuers were on standby outside the tunnel, and ambulances arrived to prepare to take the 41 people to a hospital about 30 kilometers away.
Wakir Hassan, the leader of the rescue team, said, "The trapped people are in good physical condition and absolutely fine... Just like a normal person. They don't have any nervous, anxious feelings. ”
The 41 trapped workers had been getting essential food, water, oxygen and medicine through pipelines, but efforts to rescue them by digging tunnels with high-performance drilling rigs were thwarted by a series of obstacles, the report said.
On the 27th local time, the Indian government planned to use the so-called "rat hole mining" technology, and after a whole night of hard work, it was finally manually excavated to remove the remaining rocks and gravel within about 60 meters.
Indian authorities say the rubble must be cleared and evacuation pipes run through before rescuers can climb in and rescue the trapped people.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on social media on the same day, "I want to say to my friends who are trapped in the tunnel that your courage and patience have inspired everyone." ”
The tunnel is part of a highway to be built at a cost of $15.<> billion, the report said.
As of now, the authorities have not disclosed the cause of the tunnel collapse, but the area is prone to disasters such as landslides, earthquakes, and floods.