DEHRADUN: Exactly a week after the rescue operations began to find over 30 people stranded inside the tunnel at the NTPC plant in Tapovan, five bodies.
These are the first bodies to have been recovered from the tunnel at the site of the flood-ravaged Tapovan-Vishnugad hydel project where people were at work when the calamity occurred last Sunday.
TAPOVAN: For family members waiting outside the Tapovan tunnel on Sunday, their worst fears came true when the rescue teams after an excruciating and long-winded operation lasting over a week were finally able to enter 125m inside the 1.6-km long tunnel where they found the first few bodies under the debris.
As they moved out with the bodies on Sunday around 5am, the mood was sombre and heart-rending as family members anxiously scanned the tunnel’s entrance with sinking hearts to see if the next body coming out of the tunnel was that of their loved one.
“I don’t know what to say. We lost our last hope when officials called us to identify what turned out to be my brother’s body. My brother has five daughters, the youngest one is just eight months old. What do I tell them?” said Suraj Pundir whose brother Alam Pundir was an electrician at the project site.
“We have successfully drilled a 75mm-wide and 12m-long hole to the silt flushing tunnel (which carries sediment and debris out of the dam’s tunnel) on Friday evening… The good sign is that there is no water or slush pressure observed in the tunnel now,” ITBP spokesperson Vivek Pandey told TOI. “However, we have not been able to insert a camera into the silt flushing tunnel due to technical difficulties.”
The rescue team with NDRF, Army and ITBP personnel will now work through the night to widen this opening. “A hole with a larger diameter will be carved. A drilling machine has been deployed to do that. The aim is to get that bore hole to a 250-300mm diameter,” Pandey said.
Uttarakhand floods: Rescuers begin widening hole in Tapovan tunnel to find missing people; toll rises to 38 A hole with a diameter of one foot will help send in a camera to ascertain the location of the workers believed to be trapped inside the tunnel and a pipe to flush out accumulated water from the tunnel, an NTP official said File image of rescue workers at the NTPC tunnel. PTI
Tapovan (Uttarakhand): Rescue teams on Saturday began widening a hole drilled into an approach tunnel on the way to the possible location of over 30 people trapped inside a sludge-choked tunnel of the NTPC s Tapovan-Vishnugad hydel project after a flash flood ravaged the area on Sunday.