Tunnel Rescue: L&T teams with advanced equipment join
The teams will deploy endoscopic and robotic cameras to sift through muck and communicate with survivors, if any, at fag end of tunnel
image for illustrative purpose
Hyderabad: Two teams of construction major Larsen & Toubro with advanced equipment on Monday joined the operation to rescue eight trapped workers from an under-construction tunnel, a portion of which collapsed on February 22 in Telangana’s Nagarkurnool district. L&T, which has the experience of the rescue operation in Uttarakhand, has brought endoscopic and robotic cameras
Nagarkurnool district Collector Badavath Santosh said the rescue teams had to cover a distance of another 40 meters to reach the point where the roof had collapsed. This stretch of the tunnel is filled with muck, making further advance of the rescue operations difficult.
The L&T teams will deploy endoscopic and robotic cameras to sift through the muck and communicate with survivors, if any, at the fag end of the tunnel. The teams used the same equipment for rescue operations after the Silkyara Bend-Barkot tunnel collapsed in Uttarakhand, where 41 workers trapped inside were rescued after 17 days in 2023.
Multiple teams from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), the Army and other agencies continued rescue operation on Monday.
More than 48 hours after a portion of the Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) tunnel collapsed, the fate of eight men, including two engineers and two machine operators, was not known.
Teams of the Indian Air Force and Navy are also reaching Srisailam in three helicopters from Visakhapatnam to join the rescue operation.
NDRF personnel managed to reach the tunnel boring machine at the 14th-km point but heaps of debris hampered the search operation.
The tunnel remained flooded with water for about two kilometres, making the rescue task more challenging for more than 300 rescue workers. Rescue teams deployed heavy motors for dewatering.
