Uttarkashi Tunnel: 12 rat-hole miners, 27 hours of hard work, rescue workers to get Rs 50,000 each

The rescue workers on Tuesday evening pulled out all 41 workers after 17 days. They got trapped after a portion of the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi collapsed due to a landslide on November 12. The rescue operation was carried out on a war footing with the help of foreign experts and machines. However, the rescue operation did not achieve much success.

Hence, on November 27, the rat-hole miners who came for manual drilling completed the excavation in just one and a half days. The pipe reached the workers, through which all the 41 workers came out one by one. Firoz, Nasir, Naseem, Munna, Monu, and Irshad among others 12 such 'rat miners' from Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh, had 36 hours to dig a way to reach 41 people trapped inside the Silkyara tunnel. They completed the work in just 27 hours.

Now, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami has announced a Rs 50,000 reward for each of the rat-hole mining experts and others who took part in the rescue operation. He also met the workers rescued from the Silkyara tunnel on Wednesday and handed over Rs 1 lakh to each of them.

On November 17, the rescue operation suffered a major setback after the auger machine broke down after drilling for 45 meters. Officials followed the advice of experts and called in 12 rat-hole miners from a Delhi-based firm earlier this week to do the manual digging.

The rat miners had apparently asked for 36 hours to complete the work. Two of them did the drilling manually while the rest of the rat miners took the debris out of the tunnel. They excavated the final 12 meters and reached the trapped workers.

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