SLBC Tunnel Rescue – Officials Pin Hopes on Spots Found by Cadaver Sniffing Dogs
Rescue teams are continuing to dig at identified locations in the SLBC tunnel collapse site to search for the trapped workers.
Hyderabad: Rescue workers who have been digging through the thick layer of debris of rock and silt in the SLBC tunnel since the February 22 collapse in search of eight missing workers were hoping that they can make a breakthrough in their efforts on Saturday.
On Friday, Day 14 of the rescue effort, two Belgian Malinois human remains detection dogs that were requisitioned from Kerala were taken into the tunnel and over the debris field. They pointed to the likely spots where the missing workers could be located.
“We have started digging at these spots and hope we can find the missing persons,” Arvind Kumar, special chief secretary, disaster relief, said.
The accumulated silt in the area where the tunnel boring machine (TBM) is buried under the debris, is some 15 feet thick. Meanwhile, silt removal from the approach area to the spot where the TBM is located is also going on by putting to use the repaired conveyor belt. One more small excavator, the third, has been sent into the tunnel to speed up this work.
Elsewhere on the surface, a team of scientists from the National Centre for Seismology began their work to study the conditions of the overburden over the spot where the collapse inside the tunnel occurred. “Their work will be spread over a five sq km area over which they will deploy their equipment. This is a long-term study to examine the structural stability of the rocky mass above. Typically, such studies take six months,” an official said.
Among the specialists who went into the tunnel to explore the possibility of adding their expertise to the rescue efforts were members of a team from IIT-Madras specialising in robotics. After studying the conditions and the debris comprising broken TBM sections, rocks and silt, it was decided that using any robotic tools would not yield any results.
