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The moment four National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) personnel arrived on the other side of the rubble at the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhand to rescue 41 labourers trapped inside, their hopes of a safe evacuation were kindled, team commander Manmohan said.
The 4.5 kilometre-long Silkyara tunnel project in Uttarakhand, which is part of the central government's strategic 900-km 'Char Dham Yatra All Weather Road', will continue after the necessary safety audit and repair of the broken structure, a senior road ministry official said on Wednesday.
Rescue workers on Tuesday night pulled out all 41 workers trapped in the tunnel in a multi-agency rescue operation that hovered between hope and despair for almost 17 days. Instead of being brought out on wheeled stretchers through a steel tube that lined the 60-metre rescue shaft, the labourers crawled out of it, according to Dhami.
They were pulled out on wheeled stretchers through a 90 cm (3 feet) wide steel pipe, with the entire process being completed in about an hour.
Anil Bediya, a 22-year-old labourer who hails from Jharkhand revealed how he and his co-workers endured the terrifying ordeal by eating puffed rice and licking water from rocks.