Telangana tunnel rescue: No response as names called out, warns minister

Teams engaged in the operation to rescue eight trapped workers from an under-construction tunnel which collapsed on 22 February, Saturday, in Telangana’s Nagarkurnool district have received no response when they called out the names of the trapped men, state minister Jupally Krishna Rao admitted.

The excise and tourism Minister, who went inside the tunnel to have a closer look at the rescue operation, told mediapersons that the rescue workers called out names of the men who were trapped in the tunnel after a portion of the roof collapsed on Saturday. "Unfortunately, there was no response to these calls," he said.

Krishna Rao, who along with irrigation minister N. Uttam Kumar Reddy is supervising the rescue operation, said the rescue teams were very close to the point where the accident happened. The minister described the situation inside the tunnel as “horrifying” and admitted that the chances of survivors are very remote.

“Things do not look hopeful,” he said.

Krishna Rao said that since the end of the tunnel is visible already, he believes the chances of finding the trapped men alive are very remote.

The minister said though the rescue teams were very close to the spot, muck and debris were hampering their efforts. Meanwhile, roads and buildings minister Komatireddy Venkat Reddy and former minister K. Jana Reddy reviewed the situation at the tunnel on Monday, 24 February.

Venkat Reddy expressed the hope that the trapped men would be rescued by the teams engaged in the operation for 48 hours. "We have hopes. In Uttarakhand, 41 workers were rescued from a tunnel after 17 days," he said.

The minister said the government was taking help of experts from various agencies both in India and abroad for the rescue operation.

The minister said the trapped workers have come from distant states like Jharkhand and UP to work on the project and help Telangana farmers.

“This is a very unfortunate incident. I pray to god that these eight people are alive. Our motto is to rescue the people… I pray to god Srisaila Mallanna to keep them safe,” he told PTI Videos.

He further said that SLBC has been his brainchild since its inception in 2005.

Refuting BRS leader K.T. Rama Rao’s allegations that chief minister Revanth Reddy was too busy with the MLC poll campaign to take the rescue operations seriously, Venkat Reddy claimed that the opposition leader did not go to Sircilla where seven people died due to the Kaleshwaram project.

The minister noted that two of his cabinet colleagues were also at the tunnel site overseeing the rescue works.

Multiple teams of the Army, the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), the Singareni Collieries Company Ltd (SCCL) and the Hyderabad Disaster Response and Asset Protection Agency (HYDRAA) are now engaged in the operation.

Two teams of construction major Larsen & Toubro with advanced equipment joined the rescue efforts on Monday. The L&T teams, which have experience from the rescue operation in Uttarakhand, have brought endoscopic and robotic cameras too.

Nagarkurnool district collector Badavath Santosh said the rescue teams had to cover a distance of 40 metres to reach the point where the roof had collapsed.

This stretch of the tunnel is filled with muck, making further advance of the rescue operations difficult. The L&T teams will deploy endoscopic and robotic cameras to sift through the muck and communicate with survivors, if any, at the fag end of the tunnel.

They used the same equipment for rescue operations after the Silkyara Bend–Barkot tunnel collapse in Uttarakhand, where 41 workers trapped inside were rescued after 17 days in 2023.

More than 48 hours after a portion of the Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) tunnel collapsed, however, the fate of the eight men — including two engineers and two machine operators — was not known.

The trapped men are from Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir. Project manager Manoj Kumar (Uttar Pradesh), machine engineer Srinivas (Uttar Pradesh) and machine operators Sunny Singh (J&K) and Gurpreet Singh (Punjab) are among those trapped. The four workers from Jharkhand are Sandeep Sahu, Santosh Sahu, Anju Sahu and Jagta Khes.