Page 28 - Char Dham News Today

As the last ambulance carrying one of the 41 labourers rescued from an under-construction road tunnel left the site in Uttarakhands Uttarkashi district for a community health centre on Tuesday evening, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and Union minister V K Singh went straight to a temple of local deity Baba Baukhnag to express their gratitude for his blessings.

Rat-hole mining experts are nearing a breakthrough in the collapsed Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhand. After 15 days, workers are close to freedom as experts manually drill through the remaining rubble. The process, initiated on Monday, involves using hand-held tools for the final stretch. Safety concerns in rat-hole mining, associated with narrow, vertical pits, have garnered attention, leading to regulatory measures.

Indian rescuers today pulled out all 41 construction workers trapped inside a collapsed tunnel in the Himalayas for 17 days, hours after drilling through the debris of rock, concrete, and earth to reach them, officials said

A paralysed Shravan Bediya, 55, whose only son Rajendra was trapped there, was seen in a wheelchair outside his hut with some relief on his face after prolonged desperation. Besides 22-year-old Rajendra, two others from the village -- Sukhram and Anil, both in their early 20s, were trapped inside the tunnel for 17 days.

Emergency crews have been attempting to free the workers since the tunnel in the Himalayas collapsed 16 days ago.

NDRF and SDRF men entered the steel chute to reach the trapped workers and were bringing them out on wheeled-stretchers one by one, said a rescuer

All 41 workers have been rescued from a collapsed tunnel in India after being trapped for more than two weeks.

Lt Gen (retd) Syed Ata Hasnain says the Indian government has learned a lot from all the unfortunate accidents and disasters that have taken place in the country this year, and going forward, will be better prepared to avoid such incidents.

Breakthrough in 17 days of struggle to free the men come as specialised ‘rat-hole miners’ are called in to manually clear debris

Rat-hole mining may be illegal, but rat miners' talent and experience which is being used, it is their capability which is being used: NDMA member