NEW DELHI, Nov 23
According to the officials, they eventually managed to clear the metal girders and restarted drilling, but after 1.8 metres more, another similar hurdle appeared to be blocking their path.
“The obstruction (on Wednesday) was a lattice girder that was at the mouth of the pipe that we had thrusted till 45 metres. That has been successfully removed. The entire work is now focusing on the reassembly of the pipe for a fresh push of six metres, which takes (including the assembly, welding, and pushing) roughly around four hours,” said Bhaskar Khulbe, a former adviser to the PMO and Officer on Special Duty (OSD) to the Uttarakhand tourism department.
“Our calculation as of now is that we need to negotiate a (total) distance of 60 metres to safely reach our trapped workers. This means 18 metres more, roughly about 14-15 hours, unless something else happens,” said Khulbe in the afternoon. He said that it was at the mouth of the pipe that the lattice girder had caused an obstruction, and the auger had been repaired to the extent that it could be. He said rescuers have taken corrective measures to improve the movement of the auger inside.
Later in the day, Neeraj Khairwal, Secretary of the Uttarakhand Government, said that when the machine hit the metal girders, they had to withdraw it all the way back to understand the issue. The process itself took around two hours.
“We then sent our experts (into the pipes) to remove the issue. However, it was a very tough job as gas cutting in the closed area of the pipes creates a lot of heat. Two teams failed to do that. Then the Trenchless Engineering company called their experts, Praveen and Balvinder, who stayed inside for over two hours and cut the girders. After cutting through the metal, the old assembly line of the machine was established and since then we are inside by 1.8 metres more,” said Khairwal.
He said that late in the afternoon, they again faced some hurdles, but instead of pushing further, the experts decided to inspect the hurdle to clear the path for further drilling.
Mahmood Ahmad, the Managing Director of National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL), said that in case of too much pressure build-up again, they will need to repeat the process of bringing the machine all the way back and analysing the blockage.
