HYDERABAD, Feb 23: Rescue teams are making progress in their efforts to reach the engineers and workers trapped inside a tunnel after a section of the Srisailam Left Bank Canal project collapsed 24 hours earlier. Officials reported on Sunday that the operation was ongoing.
At the accident site in Nagarkurnool district, approximately 150 km from Hyderabad, rescuers have been calling out to the trapped individuals, but there has been no response, according to sources.
Rescuers managed to reach up to the 13th kilometer inside the tunnel, just a short distance from where the incident occurred at around 8:30 am on Saturday.
State Ministers N. Uttam Kumar Reddy and J. Krishna Rao have arrived at the site to supervise the ongoing rescue efforts, as per official reports.
“Rescue teams need to remove debris consisting of iron, dirt, and concrete blocks. They have successfully reached the site of the collapse and are currently assessing conditions at the location where the Tunnel Boring Machine was last positioned,” sources informed PTI.
“The (rescue) teams have almost reached the last point (to the machine). We are evaluating the situation,” said a senior police official on Sunday.
Among the eight individuals trapped, six are affiliated with Jaiprakash Associates, consisting of two engineers and four laborers, while the other two work for a U.S. firm.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached out to Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy on Saturday to inquire about the incident and pledged full support from the central government for the ongoing rescue operations.
As of Sunday, a multifaceted rescue effort is underway, involving personnel from the NDRF, SDRF, Army, and employees from the construction company.
When construction work recently resumed, approximately 50 individuals entered the tunnel during the first shift on Saturday morning, using a 200-meter-long tunnel boring machine. They ventured up to 13.5 km inside when the cave-in occurred. Eight members, including two engineers ahead of the machine, became trapped, while the remaining 42 were able to escape towards the tunnel’s exit.
Uttam Kumar Reddy stated that work commenced on the “world’s longest 44 km tunnel” to channel water from the Srisailam project for irrigation of four lakh acres in the Nalgonda district. Approximately 9.5 km of the project remains to be completed, he added.
Revanth Reddy has been consistently monitoring the situation, directing officials to accelerate the rescue efforts to retrieve those trapped, according to government sources. (Agencies)
