Tunnel rescue: Jubilation, but hard lessons to learn
India on Tuesday evening witnessed one of its biggest successful rescue operations ever. The operation set free 41 workers trapped for 17 days from 5.30 am on November 12 in the 4.5-km Silkyara-Dandalgaon tunnel, a part of the 889-km Char Dham national highway project in Uttarakhand. It took 397-and-a-half hours for a 250-strong rescue team to get to the trapped workers; on the final day, all 41 were safely extracted within minutes. It was a determined, united effort to get the workers out alive.
The rescue team faced multiple challenges delaying horizontal drilling through 57 metres of collapsed rubble that had trapped the workers. The challenges included the blades of a state-of-the-art auger drilling machine—especially brought over from Delhi by air—getting stuck in the rubble and an obstruction caused by a metal girder. The final 10 metres were bored with handheld drills by rat-hole miners, who were the first to reach the trapped workers. The biggest test was to ensure the drilling progressed without further collapses, which would have endangered those trapped and the rescuers. But once the 41 were out, there was jubilation all around as emotional family members hugged the workers after 17 nail-biting days.
As the country and its leaders sigh in relief, the threat of a repeat of such a disastrous event—or worse—continues to stare us in the face. Geologists have cautioned against large infrastructure projects in this geologically unstable and seismically prone Himalayan region that has a variety of sedimentary rocks, each with its own density and texture. The softer rocks are prone to crumbling, causing landslides—which is suspected to have caused the November 12 tunnel collapse in the first place. This makes the region highly unstable and vulnerable to frequent earthquakes. The Char Dham highway project envisages building 100 bridges, 16 tunnels and bypasses, and 15 flyovers in such a region. Besides, the state government has 33 hydel projects lined up to produce over 1,400 MW of electricity. We should remember that this is also the region where the Ganga and its main tributaries originate, sustaining 60 crore Indians downstream. The tunnel collapse and rescue should be a hard lesson that pushes us to ensure a safer future for such a large population and a more sustainable ecology for the whole subcontinent.