First footage of 41 workers trapped in Indian tunnel emerges as rescue efforts press on
The workers trapped in a tunnel in India for 10 days have been delivered hot meals through a narrow pipe, as Martha Fairlie reports
The first footage of 41 workers trapped in a tunnel in northern India has emerged as rescue workers dig desperately to try and free them.
The trapped workers have been stuck in the collapsed tunnel in Uttarakhand for nine days, surviving on nuts and roasted chickpeas that are being fed through a pipe.
The video shows a worker being talked to at the end of a pipe that has been dug to where they are stuck.
The worker then grabs hold of the camera and it swaps to a general view of several of the trapped people.
It was filmed using an endoscopic camera slipped into one of the pipes rescue workers have been able to feed to the location where the trapped workers are.
On 12 November a landslide caused a portion of the 4.5-kilometre (2.8-mile) tunnel they were building to collapse about 200 metres (650 feet) from the entrance.
The tunnel is set to be part of the Chardham all-weather road, a flagship federal project connecting various Hindu pilgrimage sites.
Authorities in India previously told CNN they had contacted the specialist teams in Norway and Thailand behind the successful rescue of 12 boys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave in northern Thailand in 2018.
About 200 disaster relief personnel have been at the site using drilling equipment and excavators in the rescue operation.
Rescue efforts have been hampered by the large amount of debris at the site, forcing rescue workers to dig vertically down towards to trapped workers.
The horizontal drilling effort was halted after the machine carrying out was damaged by the debris.
The machine’s high-intensity vibrations also caused more debris to fall.
Drilling vertically from the top of the hill could also cause debris, but officials said they would use a technique designed for unstable ground.
The rescuers will need to dig 103 metres (338 feet) to reach the trapped workers — nearly double than if they carried on digging from the front.
Officials said the efforts to reach the workers from the horizontal tunnel would continue.
An access road has been built on top of the hill from where the vertical drilling will start, disaster management official Devendra Patwal said.
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