Hyderabad, Feb 27 Rescue teams intensified operation to rescue eight persons trapped in the Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) tunnel in Telangana’s Nagarkurnool district on Thursday, the sixth day after the partial collapse of the under-construction tunnel.
Teams of the Army, the Navy, the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), and rat hole miners were removing silt and debris from the tunnel with the target of completing the rescue operation in two days.
The rescue workers were using gas plasma cutters to detach damaged parts of the tail portion of the Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) to clear the access to the last end of the tunnel where the eight men were trapped.
Officials said that their priority is now to clear the access by removing debris and silt. The rescue workers were also engaged in the efforts to ensure that the loco train reached up to the last point and the conveyor belt became operational.
Experts of the National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) were also assessing the situation inside the tunnel. They will study if continued removal of silt may result in further collapse.
The rescue agencies intensified the operation after a high-level meeting attended by military tunnel experts and state ministers N. Uttam Kumar Reddy and Komatireddy Venkat Reddy decided to move ahead with a concrete action plan.
The review meeting decided to go for full-fledged dewatering and desilting.
Irrigation Minister Uttam Kumar Reddy said the government was leaving no stone unturned to rescue the trapped workers. He said the rescuers were working round-the-clock.
He hopes that a breakthrough in reaching the trapped men could happen "very soon".
"With the intensified rescue efforts, deployment of elite forces, and new high-tech interventions, a breakthrough in reaching the trapped workers could happen very soon,” said Uttam Kumar Reddy.
He expressed the hope that the rescue would be completed within two days and that new strategies were being implemented to mitigate challenges inside the tunnel.
The minister said as part of the intensified rescue operations, the government has also introduced reinforced support structures to stabilise the pathway leading to the TBM ensuring that rescuers can navigate safely through the tunnel.
"Officials have been instructed to accelerate debris removal and reinforce weakened tunnel sections to prevent any secondary collapses," said Uttam Kumar Reddy.
The government is also taking the help of experts in the construction of tunnels in border areas and those who participated in rescue operations after similar tunnel accidents in other parts of the country.
Rescue teams had not been able to advance further for the last two days due to 7-9 metre high silt in the last 40-metre stretch.
The accident occurred 14 km inside the tunnel. While the rescue teams had already reached 13.5 km, they could not advance further for the last two days due to mud, the debris of TBM, and seepage of water.
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