SLBC tunnel collapse: Telangana Minister Jupally Krishna Rao says survival chances of 8 trapped men bleak

Hyderabad: Telangana Minister Jupally Krishna Rao on Monday said the chances of survival of eight trapped men in the SLBC tunnel are very remote though all efforts are being made to take them out safely.

Speaking to the media from his campsite at the Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) project site on Monday, Krishna Rao said that a team of rat miners, who saved the construction workers stuck in the Silkyara Bend-Barkot tunnel in Uttarakhand in 2023, had joined the rescue operations to free them.

“It will take at least three to four days to rescue the people who are trapped because the accident site is covered in mud and debris, making the task extremely difficult for the rescuers. To be honest, their chances of survival are low. Because I went all the way to the end, which was only about 50 meters away from the accident scene. When we snapped photographs, the end of the tunnel was apparent and mud had piled up to 25 feet from the tunnel's 9-meter diameter, which is about 30 feet,” the Minister said.

Krishna Rao also said that there was no response from the feared trapped workers when their names were shouted in the tunnel by the rescue teams to trace their identity. The people who have been stranded in the collapsed tunnel for more than 48 hours have been identified as Manoj Kumar and Sri Niwas from Uttar Pradesh, Sunny Singh (Jammu and Kashmir), Gurpreet Singh (Punjab), and Sandeep Sahu, Jegta Xess, Santosh Sahu, and Anuj Sahu from Jharkhand. Of the eight, two are engineers, two are operators and four are laborers.

He said that the debris removal procedure is currently underway. Advanced machinery has been pressed into service to reach the trapped people. The

Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM), which weighs a few hundred tons, was nearly flushed away around 200 meters after the collapse due to the gushing water. "Where is the oxygen even if the trapped workers are in the lower portion of the TBM machine, even if the top portion is intact? How will the oxygen go underneath?" he said, even though oxygen pumping and dewatering had been ongoing.

"I think it takes at least three to four days (to extricate the people) to remove all the debris and all that, despite all kinds of efforts and all kinds of organizations (working)," stated Rao, who had supervised the rescue efforts with Irrigation Minister Uttam Kumar Reddy. He added that the conveyor belt was being restored in the tunnel to clear the debris.

Despite the Indian Army, NDRF, and other agencies' tireless efforts, no progress has been made in the rescue operations to extricate the eight people who have been trapped inside the tunnel for over 48 hours after a section of it collapsed in the Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) project in Telangana's Nagarkurnool district on Saturday.