India News | NDRF Team Kindled Hopes of 41 Labourers Rescued from Uttarakhand Tunnel
Get latest articles and stories on India at LatestLY. The moment four NDRF personnel arrived on the other side of the rubble at the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhand to rescue 41 labourers trapped inside, their hopes of a safe evacuation were kindled, team commander Manmohan said on Tuesday.
Uttarkashi (Uttarakhand), Nov 28 (PTI) The moment four NDRF personnel arrived on the other side of the rubble at the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhand to rescue 41 labourers trapped inside, their hopes of a safe evacuation were kindled, team commander Manmohan said on Tuesday.
"As soon as we waved at them and announced that an NDRF team is here for their safe evacuation and they have no reason to worry, there was a loud cheer among the group," Manmohan, who was the first person to crawl through the passage to the other end of the rubble, said.
The NDRF team was there for nearly two hours, he added.
"We told them we are from the NDRF and have come to evacuate you to safety. The entire country stands with you," Sachin Chaudhary from Rajasthan's Alwar told PTI while recounting his experience.
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"We crawled through the 800-mm-diameter pipes to reach them. We had stretchers behind us. We had an oxygen cylinder and water bottles with us," he said.
Chaudhary said the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team that went inside the under-construction road tunnel in Uttarkashi district, motivated the labourers who were trapped inside the structure for almost 17 days.
The NDRF personnel sent out the older ones among the labourers -- about 10-12 of them -- on wheeled stretchers through the passage, while the rest crawled through the steel chute wearing knee-pads and helmets.
"We had confidence in our training. We were sure that we will succeed in evacuating them and we did," Chaudhary said.
Besides Manmohan and Chaudhary, the two other members of the NDRF team were Pradeep Kumar and Vinod Rawat.
Rescue workers on Tuesday evening pulled out all the 41 workers who got trapped after a portion of the Silkyara tunnel, part of the Centre's ambitious Char Dham project, collapsed due to a landslide on November 12.
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)