Indian rescuers faced repeated and unexpected setbacks during the 17 days they dug through a mountain in the country’s north to reach 41 construction workers trapped after a tunnel collapsed there earlier this month
The rescue mission was expected to last only a few days. Instead, it took 17 days to reach 41 construction workers who were trapped when a landslide collapsed a mountain tunnel in northern India earlier this month.
The excruciating wait finally ended at nightfall on Tuesday, as temperatures dropped near the accident site in the mountainous state of Uttarakhand. Everyone was pulled out alive.
But beyond the jubilation and relief, questions remain as to why what became one of the most significant and complicated rescue operations in India’s recent history — aided by international tunneling experts and spearheaded by multiple rescue agencies — took so long.
News of the trapped workers spread fast after a Nov. 12 early morning landslide caused a portion of the 4.5-kilometer (2.8-mile) Silkyara Tunnel they were building near the town of Uttarkashi in Uttarakhand state to collapse about 200 meters (650 feet) from the entrance.
No one was seriously injured or killed in the collapse but the engineers on the team knew they had their task cut out for them. They had to penetrate through rocks and metal to reach the workers trapped behind a wall of nearly 60 meters (197 feet) of debris.
At first, the rescuers tried to reach the trapped workers — all poor migrant laborers from across the country — by drilling horizontally through the debris, in a straight line, using excavators and drilling machines.
