SILKYARA, India—Rescuers trying to reach workers trapped for nearly a week in a collapsed highway tunnel in the Indian Himalayas began working on an alternate plan on Saturday, after the operation hit a snag the day before.
The men have been stuck in the hillside tunnel in since Sunday morning after it caved in and are safe, authorities said. The trapped workers have light and receive oxygen, food, water, and medicines via a pipe, and can communicate via radios.
The new plan involves drilling vertically from the top of the mountain under which 41 workers were trapped while working on a highway tunnel, said D P Baloni, divisional forest officer for Uttarkashi, in the northern state of Uttarakhand, India.
The rescue team has been drilling horizontally through the debris of the collapsed tunnel to reach the trapped workers. But the augur machine being used to drill broke on Friday and a new one was flown in on Saturday.
The new plan is to simultaneously drill from the side and above, said Bhaskar Khulbe, officer on special duty for the tunnel project.
A geological survey was conducted by a team of experts that has helped identify four points on the mountain through which vertical…
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