Hyderabad, Feb 24 (IANS) Teams engaged in the operation to rescue eight trapped workers from an under-construction tunnel which collapsed on Saturday in Telangana’s Nagarkurnool district, received no response when they called out names of the trapped men, state Minister Jupally Krishna Rao admitted.
The Excise and Tourism Minister, who went inside the tunnel to have a closer look at the rescue operation, told media persons that the rescue workers called out names of the men who were trapped in the tunnel after a portion of the roof collapsed on Saturday. “Unfortunately, there was no response to these calls,” he said.
Krishna Rao, who along with Irrigation Minister N. Uttam Kumar Reddy is supervising the rescue operation, said the rescue teams were very close to the point where the accident happened.
The minister described the situation inside the tunnel as horrifying and admitted that the chances of survivors are very remote. “Things do not look hopeful,” he said.
Krishna Rao said since the end of the tunnel was visible, he believes the chances of finding the trapped men alive are very remote.
The minister said though the rescue teams were very close to the spot, muck and debris were hampering their efforts.
Meanwhile, Roads and Buildings Minister Komatireddy Venkat Reddy and former minister K. Jana Reddy reviewed the situation at the tunnel on Monday.
Venkat Reddy expressed the hope that trapped men will be rescued by the teams engaged in the operation for 48 hours. “We have hopes. In Uttarakhand, 41 workers were rescued from a tunnel after 17 days,” he said.
The minister said the government was taking help of experts from various agencies both in India and abroad for the rescue operation.
Multiple teams of the Army, the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), the Singareni Collieries Company Ltd (SCCL) and the Hyderabad Disaster Response and Asset Protection Agency (HYDRAA) were engaged in the operation.
Two teams of construction major Larsen & Toubro with advanced equipment on Monday joined the rescue efforts.
L&T teams, which have the experience of the rescue operation in Uttarakhand, have brought endoscopic and robotic cameras.
Nagarkurnool district Collector Badavath Santosh said the rescue teams had to cover a distance of another 40 metres to reach the point where the roof had collapsed. This stretch of the tunnel is filled with muck, making further advance of the rescue operations difficult.
The L&T teams will deploy endoscopic and robotic cameras to sift through the muck and communicate with survivors, if any, at the fag end of the tunnel.
They used the same equipment for rescue operations after the Silkyara Bend-Barkot tunnel collapse in Uttarakhand, where 41 workers trapped inside were rescued after 17 days in 2023.
More than 48 hours after a portion of the Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) tunnel collapsed, the fate of eight men including two engineers and two machine operators was not known.
The trapped men are from Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, and Jammu & Kashmir.
Project manager Manoj Kumar (Uttar Pradesh), Machine engineer Srinivas (Uttar Pradesh) and machine operators Sunny Singh (J&K) and Gurpreet Singh (Punjab) are among those trapped.
The four workers from Jharkhand are Sandeep Sahu, Santosh Sahu, Anju Sahu, and Jagta Khes.
–IANS
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