“Some small food packets were sent in through a pipe which is also taking oxygen inside,” rescue official Durgesh Rathodi told AFP from the site.
Rathodi said excavators had removed about 20m of heavy debris, but the men were 40 metres beyond that point.
“Due to excess debris in the tunnel, we are facing some difficulty in the rescue, but our team is leaving no stone unturned,” Bhandari added.
“BRING THEM OUT SAFELY”Â
Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, who on Monday flew to the site of the accident, said the work to remove the tons of tumbled concrete debris were “being made continuously to bring them out safely”, he wrote on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
“Contact has been made with the workers trapped in the tunnel through a walkie-talkie,” he said. “Efforts are being made to get them out safely soon.”
One rescue worker, quoted by the Press Trust of India news agency, said the men were contacted shortly after midnight on Monday.
Disaster response official Devendra Patwal said that while the men were trapped, they had space in the tunnel area where they were.
“The good thing is that the labourers are not crammed in, and have a buffer of around 400 metres to walk and breathe,” Patwal told the Indian Express newspaper.
Source: CNA
