The rescue teams completed the drilling work this Tuesday to open the escape route for the 41 workers who were trapped 17 days ago in a tunnel under construction in northern India, after which maneuvers are expected to begin to remove the workers one by one.
“The work of laying pipes in the tunnel to remove the workers has been completed. Soon all the working brothers will be extracted,” said the head of the government of the northern state of Uttarakhand, Pushkar Singh Dhami, on the social network X.
(You can read: Hopeful video: first images of 41 workers trapped in a tunnel are obtained).
The pipes, almost a meter in diameter, connect the entrance to the tunnel in the town of Silkyara, in Uttarakhand, with the cavity in which the workers are found, and rescuers are expected to enter first to help extract the workers. on special stretchers.
The workers were trapped in the early hours of November 12 when a section of a tunnel collapsed in constructionand were separated from the entrance by a layer of rubble nearly 60 meters thick.
After more than two weeks of drilling, carried out mainly by a tunnel boring machine that broke down last Friday, the last section of the excavation was carried out by three teams of rathole miners, specialized in making their way through narrow tunnels, despite the risk that entails.
(Also: Video: dozens of fireworks explode inside a movie theater in India).
Until 41 ambulances are now waiting outside the tunnelaccording to images from Indian television NDTV, to transfer people to a makeshift hospital at the site of the accident.
The workers are expected to be very weakened even though they have received food, water and medicine, as well as oxygen, since the day of the collapse thanks to a narrow pipe that connected their cavity with the entrance and survived the collapse.
Their relatives had already been warned throughout the morning to come with the workers’ clothes and bags, given the imminence of the rescue, reported the Indian news agency ANI.
The rescue of the workers, which has lasted more than 400 hours, has experienced numerous setbacks since its beginning that significantly delayed the deadline expected by the authorities to get them out alive, after small collapses, metal obstacles that prevented drilling, or breakdowns. in the tunnel boring machines.
EFE
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