Uttarkashi tunnel rescue: Next few hours crucial; here’s how NDRF plans to pull out trapped workers

The next few hours of the rescue operations at the Silkyara tunnel is going to be crucial. The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) has laid out proper plan as they will be pulling out the 41 trapped workers from the tunnel soon.

According to the NDRF plan, the workers will one by one will be pulled out with the help of wheeled stretchers tied to ropes.

NDRF Director General Atul Karwal has said that the force is fully ready for the evacuation.

It has been 11 days since the workers have been trapped after a portion of the under-construction tunnel collapsed on the Uttarakhand Char Dham route.

The NDRF men will go through the pipe and once they reach the workers, they will use their equipment to start sending them out of the tunnel one by one, said Karwal.

According to the officials, the workers will lie upon low-height, wheeled stretchers and BDRF men will pull them out one after the other using ropes.

The 800-mm diameter rescue pipes will be thoroughly checked to ensure that no debris acts as an obstruction in the movement of the stretchers.

"These 800-mm pipes have a width of nearly 32 inches which is enough. Even if we get a width of 22-24 inches, we can pull out people through them. Our men have carried out rehearsals for the exercise," Karwal was quoted by PTI.

The overnight technical snag had delayed the drilling by several hours. It was an iron obstruction that had come in the path of the machine drilling that delayed the drilling of the escape path, said officials.

The setback delayed drilling through the 57-metre stretch of the rubble by six hours.

State government's nodal officer Neel Neeraj Khairwal told reporters at around 2 pm drilling had progressed by 1.8 metre after the setback Wednesday night at the 45-metre mark.

Section-by-section a steep pipe is being pushed through the rubble as the uger machine drills.

Responding to the rescue operations, CM Pushkar Singh Dhami said that "we are very close to the workers now."

Along with Dhami, Union Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways V K Singh and NDRF Director General Atul Karwal were at Silkyara Thursday to review the rescue effort.