After 17 days, workers who were trapped in an under-construction tunnel in the Himalayas have been rescued, in a daunting and successfully executed rescue mission by Indian agencies and international experts. The workers had been trapped behind nearly 200 feet of rubble following a landslide that had collapsed a portion of the tunnel on November 12th. The workers, who were employed by a Hyderabad-based engineering firm, were finally able to crawl out to the outside world through a passageway dug in the midst of the rubble. The workers’ family members, who had camped outside the tunnel over the course of the operation, warmly greeted their loved ones as an ambulance whisked the workers away.
The tunnel in Silkyara, a village at the foothills of the Himalayas, is part of an ambitious road network initiated by India’s Hindu nationalist government. The road network aims to connect four Hindu shrines in the Himalayas and allow the Indian military all-weather access to reach the border with China. However, environmentalists have expressed concerns, citing the region’s proneness to landslides, earthquakes, and floods. Despite this, there are no plans to halt infrastructure projects in the Himalayas. India’s minister of road transport, Nitin Gadkari, acknowledged that lessons must be learned from the accident and that a safety audit of the tunnel would be conducted. However, he emphasized the continued necessity of working in the Himalayas, despite the challenges.
Former director of the Geological Survey of India, Pramod Nawani, has asserted that the collapse of the tunnel was likely due to carelessness, attributing it to lack of proper support systems used during construction. Now that the workers have been successfully rescued, the incident continues to prompt discussions and reflections on the safety measures and environmental impact of infrastructural development in the region.
