An emergency operation is underway for the rescue of at least eight workers trapped inside a tunnel under construction after its roof collapsed on Saturday in the southern Indian state of Telangana, officials said.
The incident occurred at a stretch of the Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) – an irrigation project – in Nagarkurnool district of the state, some 200km from capital Hyderabad.
Dozens of workers managed to escape as a section of the tunnel started to collapse but eight people were feared trapped, reports said. Chief minister A Revanth Reddy directed government officials and the police in Nagarkurnool district to reach the place of accident to carry out relief measures, a statement from his office said.
Videos on Sunday showed rescuers calling out the names of some of the trapped workers as they tried to enter the blocked tunnel. An official of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) said a rescue team went inside the tunnel at 10pm on Saturday, covering 11 km on a locomotive and the remaining 2km on a conveyor belt.
“When we reached the end of the tunnel boring machine, we called out their names, but did not get an answer,” an NDRF deputy commander told the media. “There is a 200-metre patch filled with debris. Until this debris is cleaned, we will not be able to find out the exact location of the trapped workers and rescue them. Water is filled in the patch between 11-13km of the tunnel, and until water is removed, debris cleaning work will not start,” he said, according to newswire ANI.
An official statement earlier said: “In particular, at the 14km point, the roof of the left-side tunnel collapsed for 3m. This happened when employees were performing their duties at the site.”
“On the orders of the chief minister, irrigation minister Uttam Kumar Reddy, irrigation advisor Adityanath Das and irrigation officials left for the accident site in a special helicopter,” the statement said.
The opposition Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) criticised the government and said it should take full responsibility for the incident. BRS leader KT Rama Rao posted on X: “Such incidents are happening due to the collusion with contractors, the evasion of supervision in the hunt for commissions, and the complete compromise on quality standards.”
Earlier, B Santosh, a senior government official, said there has been no contact with those trapped, the internal communication mechanism has failed, and the air chamber and conveyor belt have both collapsed, according to NDTV.
In 2023, 41 workers were rescued from an under-construction tunnel that collapsed in India’s Himalayan state of Uttarakhand. The rescue mission was expected to last only a few days. Instead, it took 17 days to reach the workers and is considered the most significant and complicated rescue operations in India’s recent history – aided by international tunnelling experts and spearheaded by multiple rescue agencies.
