Rescue teams have inched closer to the engineers and workers trapped inside a tunnel after a section of the Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) project collapsed 24 hours ago, with operations underway to extricate them, officials said on Sunday.
The teams in the accident site at Nagarkurnool district, about 150 km from Hyderabad, called out the names of the trapped people, but there was no response, sources said.
The rescue personnel were able to reach up to the 13th km inside the tunnel, a short distance from where the mishap occurred around 8.30 am on Saturday.Three teams of engineers and rescuers have assessed the strength of the SLBC tunnel in Telangana’s Nagarkurnool in which eight men are trapped.
“It is not possible to move forward. We are trying,” said Minister Jupally Krishna Rao. The minister said that rescue teams were able to go up to the 100-meter area where the workers were trapped. Later, he said that mud and debris were entering the area due to the roof collapse. The rescue team said that it is not yet possible to move forward, but they are trying, he added.
They said that they are constantly checking the situation with the authorities. Meanwhile, the NDRF team returned from the tunnel after four hours. They traveled 12 kilometers in the under-tunnel train and walked two kilometers from there. They could not move forward as the water was knee-deep. Officials say that a total of six meters were filled with mud.
Teams from the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), Fire Services Department, and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) inspected the tunnel on the intervening night of Saturday and Sunday.
“Three teams of the state and national disaster response contingents have assessed the tunnel to check if it is strong enough to let rescuers travel a distance,” Vaibhav Gaikwad, Superintendent of Police, Nagarkurnool, said. A team of engineers and miners from the state’s Singareni Collieries, too, has reached the spot to assess the situation.