Spiritual force aided Silkyara rescue, says Oz tunnelling expert

DEHRADUN: Arnold Dix was in Germany when the first call came. Then another, in Slovenia. The news was urgent - a tunnel collapse in Uttarakhand had left 41 workers stranded.

Their survival depended on whether a narrow passage could be drilled through layers of hard rock and debris before time ran out. He didn't hesitate. "I was asked to join the team working to rescue the trapped workers. Without a second thought, I boarded a flight to India," he said.

He arrived in Uttarkashi on Nov 20, eight days after the collapse. By then, frustration had begun to seep into the operation. The site was a blur of officials, rescue workers, and media crews. A nation watched as engineers, officials, and workers clawed at the earth, racing against time.

Dix, a tunnelling expert from Australia and the president of the International Tunnelling & Underground Space Association, was a man of engineering, precision, and numbers - he wasn't built to believe in things he couldn't measure. But standing at the mouth of that collapsed tunnel, surrounded by exhaustion and failure, he felt the unshakable presence of something heavier than rock.

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