US machine fails, no rescue work for 24 hrs

DEHRADUN/UTTARKASHI: In a major setback to the operation to rescue the workers trapped inside the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi for seven days now, the ‘American auger’ drill machine, which was airlifted via IAF transport aircraft from New Delhi on Thursday, failed to drill beyond 22 metres due to technical issues. As a result, operations by multi-agency teams had to be stalled since Friday afternoon.According to officials, the horizontal boring-machine made little headway in negotiating the piled-up debris inside the tunnel.
After the failed attempts, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) took charge of the rescue operations on Saturday. In a statement issued late in the evening, it said that “the government has taken a decision to work on all fronts to save precious lives of the labourers.”
In a high-level meeting, various options were examined based on technical advice and five options were decided to be pursued. In addition, couple of additional pipes for redundancy of food support would also be put up. NHIDCL, ONGC, SJVNL, THDC and RVNL have been assigned one option each,” the statement said, adding that Mahmood Ahmed, MD, NHIDCL, executing agency of the tunnel project, has been made in-charge for coordination with all the agencies involved.
In addition, the state government has appointed IAS officer Neeraj Khairwal as the nodal officer for the coordination. Bhaskar Khulbe, former secretary to the PM and currently an advisor to the state government, who visited the site on Saturday, said, “We are looking at a maximum of 4 to 5 days to complete this operation. We might achieve it before that time as well. The plan is to carry out work on all the discussed options simultaneously.”
According to sources, the five options are likely to be -- exploring the possibility of vertical drilling on top of the tunnel, excavating two escape channels/tunnels on both sides of the Silkyara tunnel, digging a tunnel from Barkot side and continuing with the previous method of pushing pipes via an auger boring machine. Earlier, NHIDCL had said that the auger machine’s bearings were getting damaged as they were trying to drill further.