Uttarkashi tunnel rescue operations hit another snag, second in two days, manual drilling being contemplated, timeline of the incident

On November 12 when the entire nation was busy celebrating Diwali, 41 workers in Uttarakhand's Uttarkashi were trapped inside an under construction tunnel on the Yamunotri National Highway since the wee hours. Fourteen days later, they are still trapped with the rescue operations hitting major setbacks in the past two days.

The authorities had earlier shown confidence that the rescue operations would conclude by the evening of November 24. However, the drilling machine hit another snag late Friday night, and now reportedly the authorities are contemplating manual drilling.

The auger drilling machine faced a metal object-like hurdle soon after drilling resumed on Thursday after hitting a technical snag. Earlier the entire day was taken up in fixing technical glitch in the drilling machine and using radar to scan the leftover debris.

Officials say there is only ten to twelve meters of debris left ahead to reach the workers but despite that it is difficult to say with certainty when the operation will be completed.

Just before the operations stopped again on Friday evening, 46.8 meters of the 800-millimeter wide steel pipe was inserted into the drilled passageway in the tunnel. The pipe is about 60 meters long. But to create a passage for the trapped workers two more pipes of 6 meters each have to be injected into the debris. National relief and disaster management agencies such as NDRF, SDRF, BRO, NHIDCL, ITBP have been in action since the tunnel collapse.

The hurdles in the rescue mission

Twenty hours after the incident, on November 13 contact was established with the trapped workers through a pipe inserted to supply oxygen to the workers. The initial debris of 30 metres spread to 60 metres as the fresh rubble kept falling off, side-tracking rescue efforts. An auger machine is pressed into action for horizontal drilling and 800 millimeter wide steel pipes are brought to the tunnel to be inserted.

Some more debris falls leading to two laborers sustaining minor injuries and some complaining of nausea and headaches. Following which, a new drilling machine was airlifted and it managed drilling through 24 metres of debris when the process hit another obstacle. During positioning of one of the pipes a big cracking sound was heard sparking fears of further collapse thereby suspending the operation immediately. The timeline of the rescue mission stretched far longer than initially imagined by the authorities.

Is it high-time to take action on disaster prevention rather than development?

Uttarkashi tunnel, central government's prime infrastructure outing being constructed under the Char Dham project, aims to join the Gangotri and Yamunotri-axis under the Radi pass. The collapse is not the first or one-off infrastructural incident of the year.

In August of this year, when an unprecedented monsoon hit the hill states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, it made one thing amply clear; that the two states are an ecological disaster in the making. Joshimath in Uttarakhand itself being a strong case in point. Manish Khanduri, AICC member and contestant for 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Garhwal, had said back then that there is trouble in the entire region and credited unchecked development and unplanned development. "There is no systemic level or institutional level study of what is effective in the hills. For example, a company is given the task of constructing a road, they go about blasting the site, construct a road and leave. The entire approach towards hill development needs an overhaul, outside contractor business has to stop, we need environmental experts, agencies and institutions taking stock of inventory before going ahead with any development or construction work. And most importantly, once construction has been done, we need continuous monitoring."

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