The Uttarkashi tunnel operation has succeeded after seventeen long days, as trapped labourers are being brought out from the collapsed Silkyara tunnel. Multiple government agencies were involved in the joint operation which faced many problems. Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami recieved the labourers coming out of the tunnel and inquired of their well-being. Emergency vehicles including 41 Ambulances are on stand-by, one for each labourer .
More details to come as the story develops.
Earlier, rescue operations to evacuate 41 workers trapped in Uttarakhand's Silkyara tunnel entered the final stretch early on Thursday after a late-night hitch when the machine drilling the escape passage through the rubble hit a hard obstacle. The drilling of 800 mm diameter steel pipes was halted for some hours overnight after an iron mesh came in the way of the auger machine, officials said. The last pipe to prepare the escape passage for the trapped workers was pushed through the rubble, as mentioned by an electrician working at the site on Thursday morning. All arrangements had been made to provide immediate medical care to the 41 trapped workers after they were evacuated, officials said. A 41-bed separate ward had been readied at the Community Health Centre in Chinyalisaur for Silkyara tunnel evacuees, and 41 ambulances waited outside the tunnel to rush them there as soon as they crawled out. Relatives of the trapped individuals were asked to go into the tunnel, from where they would accompany their respective relatives to the hospital. Until 6 pm on Wednesday, up to 44 meters of the escape pipe had been inserted into the debris, as per an official update in Delhi. Earlier, officials had mentioned that the American-made auger machine had to drill through a 57-meter stretch of debris to reach the 41 workers who were trapped when a portion of the under-construction tunnel collapsed 11 days ago. The drilling from the Silkyara end was put on hold on Friday afternoon when the auger machine encountered a hard obstacle around the 22-meter mark, creating vibrations in the tunnel that caused safety concerns. The drilling resumed around midnight on Tuesday. As the machine drilled through, six-meter sections of steel pipes, just under a meter wide, were pushed into the escape passage. Once the pipeway reached the other end, the trapped workers were expected to crawl out.
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