As eight persons got trapped around 14 km inside the tunnel of the Srisailam Left Bank Canal project after part of its roof collapsed on Saturday, a rescue team made headway and reached the spot where a tunnel boring machine was working during the incident, Nagarkurnool District Collector B Santhosh said on Sunday.
However, silt poses a challenge to move further to reach the spot where the people are believed to have been trapped, he added.
The collector, who is supervising the rescue operation, said four NDRF teams — one from Hyderabad and three from Vijayawada, comprising 138 members, 24 personnel of the army, personnel of SDRF, 23 members from SCCL with equipment besides members of the infra firm are engaged in the rescue operations.
The rescuers have reached the point where the tunnel boring machine is there. As there is silt after that point, the NDRF team is making plans to go forward.
Despite relentless efforts by the Indian Army, NDRF and other agencies, no breakthrough was achieved on Sunday in the rescue operations to extricate eight persons who have remained trapped for over 30 hours inside a tunnel after a section of it collapsed in the SLBC project, with prayers on for their well-being.
Telangana Minister J Krishna Rao told reporters that the chances of survival under the circumstances are "not that good." "Muck has piled up too high inside the tunnel, making it impossible to walk through. They (rescuers) are using rubber tubes and wooden planks to navigate through it," Krishna Rao, who went inside the tunnel, told reporters.
"We can't say. We are hopeful, but the kind of incident that took place was very serious and chances are we can not say. The chances of survival we can not predict. Chancer are not that good," he said when asked about the chances of survival of the trapped persons.
Krishna Rao said some survivors swam across the tunnel after the incident happened.
Also read: Telangana tunnel collapse: NDRF advances, 8 still trapped
Oxygen and power supply has been made available in the tunnel and dewatering and the de-silting operation is also underway.
"As of now, we don't have communication with them (those trapped). The rescuers will go inside and see and then we will be able to tell,” he said.
A NDRF official said that one of the teams had last night went inside the tunnel.
Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi called Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy on Sunday over the ongoing rescue operations at the Srisailam Left Bank Canal tunnel collapse site.
The Congress leader appreciated the steps taken and the constant vigil and monitoring and asked the government to leave no stone unturned to try and save the trapped workers, an official release said.
There is a lot of debris and the TBM is also damaged and its parts are scattered inside.
"There is water logging 2 km just before the 13.5 km point. It is a challenging task and due to this our heavy equipment is not able to reach the last point and hence dewatering has to be completed which will enable the equipment to reach ahead. Then only the removal of debris can start. Additional motors have been used to speed up the dewatering process," he said.
The team after reaching 13.5 km called those trapped, but did not get any reply from them, he said. After this point there is still a 200 meter patch and it is only after reaching near them it would be known their condition, he added.
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