Rescuers were expecting to reach the other side of debris in the Silkyara-Barkot tunnel in Uttarkashi in the next 14-15 hours after they cleared a lattice girder that came in the way of their US-made auger drilling machine on Wednesday evening. The rescuers had drilled through 45 metres of the debris until the obstacle blocked the way around 8pm. On Thursday morning, technicians were flown in from Delhi to solve the issue.

Bhaskar Khulbe, an officer on special duty for the tunnel project, said that there was an obstruction, a lattice metal girder, at the mouth of the pipe that they had thrust till 45 metres. “We have successfully cleared the obstacle [metal girder] by cutting it. The welding process is now underway…We will now fit the 6-metre pipe post 45-metre pipe passage and push the pipe using the auger machine.” He added if they take an estimate of further penetrating 18 metres, it means it will take roughly about 14-15 hours to reach our trapped workers if there are no further obstacles.

“We have been taking all precautions…an expert team has come to check the vibrations to ensure safety norms at the time,” he said. Khulbe added they were in constant communication with trapped workers and they were in good spirits. “During the cutting of metal girder using the gas cutter, its smoke reached the other side…they can feel it. They corroborated that we are close to them,” he said.

Khulbe said he cannot give a time frame for when the workers trapped inside the tunnel can be rescued. “The complete process to fit in each 6-inch pipe takes approximately 4 hours.”

Forty-one men have been stranded inside a 2km stretch since November 12 when a portion of the 4.5km tunnel on the National Highway in Uttarkashi district collapsed. There have been multiple attempts to engineer methods to evacuate the workers.