India contacts Thai cave experts in bid to free trapped tunnel workers

DEHRADUN, India - India has sought advice from the Thai company that rescued children from a flooded cave in 2018 as it races to save

40 men trapped in a road tunnel,

officials said on Wednesday.

Excavators have been removing debris since Sunday morning from the site in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand to create an escape tunnel for the workers, all of whom are still alive.

Officials have “contacted the Thai company which rescued the children trapped in the cave”, the state government’s department of public relations said in a statement.

The statement was referring to the dramatic operation to rescue 12 boys from a junior football team and their coach, who were

trapped for more than two weeks in the Tham Luang cave complex.

The authorities have also asked for help from engineering experts in soil and rock mechanics at the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute as frantic efforts to free the men stretched into a fourth day.

Rescue workers renewed efforts on Thursday to reach the 40 men trapped inside the tunnel for the fifth day, making slow progress as they began drilling through rock and soil debris.

The authorities said they were confident an advanced drilling machine flown in from New Delhi will speed up the rescue.

The plan is to drill and create space for a pipe that can be used by the trapped men to crawl to safety.

Drilling had penetrated about 3m of debris by Thursday morning, officials said, adding that they had to cover a total distance of about 60m.

The machine can drill through about 2m to 2.5m of rock per hour, Mr Ranjit Sinha, the state’s top disaster management officer, said.

Two of the trapped construction workers were treated for nausea and headache as they endured a fifth day confined to a small space behind the rubble, officials said.

“There is electricity and water, and we are sending food. The new machine, which is more powerful and speedy, is deployed,” federal Deputy Minister for Road Transport and Highways V.K. Singh, a retired army chief, told reporters at the site.

“Our priority is to save them all. The morale of people trapped inside is high. We are very optimistic of bringing them out,” he said.

Since the tunnel collapsed, the trapped men have been supplied with food, water and oxygen via a pipe, and they are in contact with rescuers via walkie-talkies.

“Two of them who complained of nausea and minor headache were given medicines through the pipe and are fine now,” Mr Arpan Yaduvanshi, a local police officer, said.

Dozens of colleagues of the trapped workers protested outside the tunnel on Wednesday, blaming the authorities for “slow rescue work”, one of the protesters told AFP.

Photos released by government rescue teams soon after the collapse showed huge piles of rubble blocking the wide tunnel, with twisted metal bars from its roof poking down in front of slabs of concrete.

The 4.5km tunnel was being constructed between the towns of Silkyara and Dandalgaon to connect Uttarkashi and Yamunotri, two of the holiest Hindu shrines.

The tunnel is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s road project aimed at improving travel conditions between some of the most popular Hindu shrines in the country, as well as areas bordering China.

Experts have warned about the impact of extensive construction in Uttarakhand, where large parts of the state are prone to landslides.

Accidents involving big infrastructure projects are common in India. In January, at least 200 people were killed in flash floods in ecologically fragile Uttarakhand in a disaster that experts partly blamed on excessive development.

Construction worker Hemant Nayak told AFP that he had been in the tunnel early on Sunday when the roof caved in, but he had been on the right side of the collapse and escaped.

Small amounts of dirt had been falling into the tunnel but “everyone took it lightly”, he told AFP on Tuesday.

“Then suddenly a huge amount of debris came, and the tunnel was closed.” AFP, REUTERS