Four trapped workers in T’gana tunnel collapse located: Minister

Rescue teams located the whereabouts of four of the eight people trapped at the site of a collapsed tunnel in Telangana, state excise minister Jupally Krishna Rao said on Saturday.

The minister said that the location of the four people was confirmed using ground penetrating radar technique on the eighth day of the rescue operation. He said that rescue teams are digging the debris at the spot where the four trapped workers were located.

“The scanning of the debris using modern technology revealed the presence of four people trapped under the debris at a depth of 5-8 metres closer to the tunnel boring machine (TBM). Another four persons are believed to be on the opposite side of the machine,” Rao told reporters at the project site.

On February 22, eight people were trapped inside the under-construction Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) tunnel in Nagarkurnool district of Telangana after a portion of its roof collapsed. According to officials, 51 workers were carrying out excavation work through a hill, about 120km from Hyderabad, when a part of the tunnel’s roof caved in at around 8.30am. Most of the workers escaped but some, including two site engineers, were trapped behind a Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) close to the 14-km mark in the tunnel, they added.

The minister said that chances of survival for the trapped individuals are “remote”, adding that the rescue teams hope to bring them out by Sunday evening. “The chances of the survival of the trapped people, which includes two engineers, two machine operators and four workers, are very remote,” he said.

Experts belonging to the National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) played a crucial role in locating the trapped people using ground probing radar (GPR) study, Rao said, adding that rat miners have been pressed into service to work on the specific location identified by the GPR equipment.

The state government mobilised ambulances at nearby Domalapenta village and a team of forensic experts, headed by Osmania General Hospital forensic department head Sridhar Chary, reached the tunnel site along with medical and health department officials.

The minister said multiple agencies who are taking part in the rescue operations were carrying out dewatering operations in the area and removing the slush, besides dismantling the mangled parts of the TBM, to clear the route for rescue teams.

South Central Railway (SCR) chief public relations officer A Sridhar said the department mobilised teams equipped with tools like plasma cutters and Brocho cutting machines to cut the TBM parts.

The eight individuals trapped in the tunnel have been identified as Manoj Kumar and Sri Niwas from Uttar Pradesh, Sunny Singh from Jammu & Kashmir, Gurpreet Singh from Punjab, and Sandeep Sahu, Jegta Xess, Santosh Sahu, and Anuj Sahu from Jharkhand.