Hyderabad, Feb 23: Rescue teams are making progress in reaching the engineers and workers trapped inside a tunnel after a section of the Srisailam Left Bank Canal project collapsed 24 hours ago. Efforts are ongoing to safely extricate them, officials reported on Sunday.
At the accident site in Nagarkurnool district, about 150 km from Hyderabad, rescuers called out to the trapped individuals but received no response, sources said. The teams have advanced up to the 13th km inside the tunnel, nearing the location of the collapse, which occurred around 8:30 am on Saturday.
State Ministers N Uttam Kumar Reddy and J Krishna Rao have travelled to the site to oversee rescue operations. Officials stated that clearing the debris—comprising iron, cement blocks, and muck—is a major challenge. The teams have reached the location where the Tunnel Boring Machine was last positioned.
“The rescue teams are almost at the last known point of the machine. We are evaluating the situation,” a senior police official confirmed.
Among the eight trapped workers, six (including two engineers and four laborers) are from Jaiprakash Associates, while two are employed by a US-based company.
On Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi contacted Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy to inquire about the situation and assured full support from the central government for the ongoing rescue efforts. The operation, involving personnel from the NDRF, SDRF, Army, and the construction company, continued on Sunday.
Following the recent resumption of construction work, 50 workers had entered the tunnel along with the 200-meter-long tunnel boring machine on Saturday morning. When the collapse occurred 13.5 km inside the tunnel, eight workers, including two engineers, were trapped, while 42 others managed to escape.
Minister Uttam Kumar Reddy noted that work on the “world’s longest tunnel, spanning 44 km,” was undertaken to draw water from the Srisailam project for irrigating four lakh acres in Nalgonda district. Currently, 9.5 km of the project remains unfinished.
Chief Minister Revanth Reddy is closely monitoring the situation and has instructed officials to expedite rescue efforts to save those trapped, the government said.
