Silkyara tunnel: Rat-hole miners arrive for manual horizontal drilling

Vertical drilling underway during the rescue operation. Pic/PTI

Vertical drilling from the top of the Silkyara tunnel, where 41 workers have been trapped for the last 15 days, progressed to 31 metres on Monday as a team of rat-hole miners arrived at the site to start manual drilling horizontally through the rubble. Vertical and manual horizontal drilling are the two methods on which rescue efforts are being focused at the moment. Work on the other options, such as horizontal drilling from the Barkot end of the tunnel is also underway.

A total of 86 metres have to be drilled vertically to prepare an escape passage. Pipes of 1.2 metres in diameter have to be laid vertically through the top of the tunnel on which work began on Sunday as a second option to reach the labourers. Lt Gen Harpal Singh (retd), former engineer-in-chief of the Army said that vertical drilling has been done up to 31 metres. Singh, who has also headed the Border Roads Organisation, is involved in the rescue operation.

Workers given psychiatric counselling

"Don't be nervous, we're on it." That's what family members of Saba Ahmad, one of the 41 workers trapped at Sikyara tunnel for the last 15 days, keep telling whenever they communicate with him. A mic has been sent to the workers, stuck in a 2-km built-up area beyond the rubble accumulated in the collapsed part, through a pipe which helps them talk to people outside. As the rescue operation got delayed due to the hurdles in drilling, Saba Ahmad was counselled by doctors and psychiatrists to keep him motivated, his brother Naiiyar Ahmad told PTI. A team of doctors, stationed at the rescue operation site, talk to the trapped workers twice a day - from 9 am to 11 am and 5 pm to 8 pm.

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