Indian authorities trying to rescue dozens of workers trapped for more than 90 hours deep inside a Himalayan mountain have reached out for international help, contacting the Thai team that rescued a boys\u2019 soccer team from a flooded cave in 2018. <\/p>\n
The 40 men have been trapped since a tunnel collapsed during construction work in northern Uttarakhand state on Sunday, with rescue efforts becoming more urgent amid reports some are becoming ill. <\/p>\n
Four days after the incident, authorities flew in a high-powered drill from the capital New Delhi to begin work on a rescue tunnel early Thursday as anger grew among relatives outside the tunnel\u2019s entrance. <\/p>\n
Authorities said they were exploring all options to reach the men, including contacting teams experienced in delicate rescue missions. <\/p>\n
\u201cHelp is being taken from special teams from Norway and Thailand,\u201d a statement shared by Uttarkashi District Information Officer, Kirti Panwar, said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe rescue team has contacted the Thailand company which had rescued the children trapped in the cave,\u201d it added. <\/p>\n
Twelve boys and their soccer coach were rescued after nearly three weeks trapped inside the flooded Tham Luang cave by a specialist cave diving team in 2018. <\/p>\n
Indian authorities have also reached out to the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI) to get advice, the statement said. <\/p>\n
In a statement Thursday, NGI said its Indian partner,\u00a0Indian Railways, RVNL, is assisting with the rescue operation but the agency is \u201cnot involved now.\u201d <\/p>\n
The men \u2013 all migrant laborers from other states \u2013 were helping to construct the tunnel, part of an ambitious but controversial project to upgrade India\u2019s transport network, when part of the passageway leading to the entrance gave way, trapping them some 60 meters inside the mountain with little oxygen, food and water. <\/p>\n
Authorities established contact with the men soon after the collapse and have since embarked on a frantic mission to bring them out safely, aided by local police, India\u2019s Disaster Management Authority and State Disaster Response Fund. <\/p>\n
Rescuers first attempted to dig through the debris to reach the men, but progress was slow as more rubble fell into the shaft. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe nature of the rock is very fragile, the more we drill the more it comes out, but we are still trying whatever techniques we have,\u201d Anshu Manish Khalkho, director of administration and finance from the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation told reporters Wednesday. <\/p>\n
Authorities then brought in a drill to try to create a hole wide enough to insert a pipe through which the men could crawl to safety. But work was paused late Tuesday after a landslide complicated efforts and officials decided the machine wasn\u2019t powerful enough. <\/p>\n
Late Wednesday, the higher-powered drill was flown in to create the hole for the escape pipe. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf this fails, we have a third and fourth backup plan. We are exploring all options to bring our brothers out,\u201d Khalkho said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhile without seeing the patient one can only say so much, the people I spoke to complained of vomiting and headaches,\u201d said Dr. B.S. Pokriyal. \u201cThey are suffering from anxiety and gastritis. We sent medicines, dry fruits, chickpeas, and puffed rice.\u201d <\/p>\n
The men have about 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) of space to walk around, Pokriyal said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey kept asking us to get them out fast, so I spent some time counselling and motivating them,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
The tunnel is part of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi\u2019s Char Dham Highway project, a multimillion-dollar infrastructure plan to improve connectivity in the state of Uttarakhand and better access to important pilgrimage locations. <\/p>\n
Uttarakhand, a mountainous and picturesque state on India\u2019s border with China, is often referred to as \u201cDevbhumi\u201d or \u201cLand of the Gods\u201d owing to its rich cultural heritage and the abundance of Hindu religious sites. <\/p>\n
The Char Dham Highway project is expected to be nearly 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) long, improving access to the state from India\u2019s capital New Delhi. But its development has come at a deep environmental cost with the large-scale destruction of forests. <\/p>\n
The project has received criticism from environmentalists who say the heavy construction could seriously damage the Himalayan region, where millions are already feeling the impact of the climate crisis. Experts say the heavy drilling could weaken \u00a0already fragile terrain, causing more landslides and flash flooding. <\/p>\n
And Sunday\u2019s collapse is one of a number of recent construction disasters to make headlines in India, a country that has been rapidly transforming its infrastructure and spending billions to upgrade its transport network. <\/p>\n
In August,\u00a0more than a dozen workers were killed\u00a0after a bridge under construction collapsed in the northeastern state of Mizoram. In June, a four-lane concrete bridge that was being built across the River Ganges in the eastern state of Bihar collapsed for the second time in just over a year, raising questions about the quality of its construction. <\/p>\n\n
Indian authorities trying to rescue dozens of workers trapped for more than 90 hours deep inside a Himalayan mountain have reached out for international help, contacting the Thai team that rescued a boys\u2019 soccer team from a flooded cave in 2018. The 40 men have been trapped since a tunnel collapsed during construction work in <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11700,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11699","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}