They were wheeled out on stretchers through a 3-foot-wide steel tube, and the entire process was completed in about an hour.
Indian relief teams rescued the 41 construction workers who had been trapped inside a collapsed tunnel in the Himalayas for 17 dayshours after drilling through the rubble of rock, concrete and earth to reach them, authorities reported.
The evacuation of men – low-paid workers from some of the poorest states in the India– began more than six hours after rescue teams traversed the rubble of the Uttarakhand state tunnelwhich collapsed on November 12.
They were taken out on wheeled stretchers through a 90 centimeters wide steel tubeand the entire process was completed in about an hour.
Who was the first worker to be evacuated
The first to be evacuated, a short man wearing a dark gray jacket and a yellow helmet, was welcomed with a garland of marigold flowers and in traditional Indian style inside the tunnel by the chief minister of the State, Pushkar Singh Dhami, and Federal Deputy Minister for Highways, VK Singh.
Ambulances with their lights on had queued earlier at the tunnel mouth to transfer workers to a hospital located about 30 kilometers away.
The inhabitants of the area gathered in front of the tunnel They set off firecrackers, distributed sweets and shouted slogans in honor of India.
The 41 men received food, water, light, oxygen and medicines through a pipe, but efforts to dig a tunnel to rescue them with high-powered drilling machines were frustrated by a series of inconveniences.
The tunnel is part of the highway Char Dham, $1.5 billionone of the most ambitious projects in the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, intended to connect four Hindu pilgrimage sites through an 890 km road network.
Authorities have not said what caused the collapse, but the region often suffers landslides, earthquakes and floods.
Source: Ambito
