CHENNAI: It has been more than 60 hours since two men -- Jayaseelan and Naresh -- were trapped in a water-filled, 55-metre trench in Velachery. For the third day on Wednesday, the families of both the men, including Jayaseelan’s pregnant wife, stayed put on a footpath opposite the trench awaiting their rescue.
The rescue operation at the site was mainly focused on a singular goal -- to drain out water in the trench using pumps so as to locate the container under which the two men are suspected to be trapped. None of the officials who were at the site on Wednesday, mostly entry-level and mid-level officers, had carried out a rescue on this scale before.
According to official sources, for the first day on Monday, a tractor-mounted de-watering pump was used before officials from NLC were brought in to run six 25kW pumps to hasten the process. At the three-day mark, they had managed to draw out water from around eight metres of the pit. To even locate the container, officials estimate that another six metres need to be de-watered.
With no rescue expert to coordinate the operation in sight, nobody knew how much time they have left.
Officials said if it had been any other stagnant body of water, the process would have been quicker. However, as they removed the water, they also noticed that the water was charged.
At the site, there were small groups of officials and staff from the city police, Greater Chennai Corporation, Metrowater, Tangedco and NLC India Limited. While the police personnel were focused on crowd control, the corporation staff, mostly malaria workers, said their job was to ensure that the family members are taken care of. The NLC staff were in charge of operating the pumps. “We estimate the operation to be completed by Thursday morning,” said an official who did not want to be named.
What worries the families of both these men, they say, is the lack of urgency from the state government.
The name ‘Jayaseelan’, his mother says, means good-natured. “With his good heart, I know he is not going anywhere. I beg mother earth to please give me back my son.” Jayaseelan’s wife is not oblivious to the whispers that are going around. “They keep telling me not to have hope. They don’t know the power of my mind,” she told her sister.
Jayaseelan works for Green Tech Structural Constructions and family members said the company had called him for work despite the cyclone alert and knowing his work entailed getting into a 50-metre deep trench. According to Naresh’s sister, Lavanya, there could have been none with fewer worries in the world as Naresh. “He had stubbornly refused to go to work all these years. Whenever we’d ask him to work, he would say he would work only for himself. He planned to work here for just a month to save enough to go to Tiruchendur Murugan temple. He told my three-year-old son that he would come to him on Tuesday so he can put the ‘mala’ on him,” she said.
Naresh, who worked at the CNG filling station adjoining the trench, had picked up three shifts since Saturday night and was supposed to go home on Monday morning when the incident happened. His house, in Velachery, has been completely flooded in Monday’s rains but the family has not bothered to salvage their belongings or even inspect the damages until the 21-year-old is rescued.
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