Rescue work disrupted briefly at Tapovan

Dehradun, Feb 11 : The rescue work to find 25-35 trapped people was repeatedly disrupted, albeit briefly, at the disaster-hit Tapovan project area of Chamoli district in Uttarakhand on Thursday following increase in flow of Dhauliganga river and technical snags in drilling machines.
“The rescue work inside the tunnel resumed in the evening after a brief interruption due to increase of flow in Dhauliganga river,” said Navneet Bhullar, commandant of the SDRF, who is camping at the Tapovan site.
Earlier, the rescue workers had started drilling the tunnel vertically downward. But within hours, the drilling work was intermittently disrupted due to technical reasons. Few hours later, the flow of Dhauliganga started increasing, which in turn disrupted the rescue work.
As the flows subsided, the rescue work again resumed in the evening, said Bhullar.
Ever since the excavation and digging work began inside the tunnel, the rescuers had been working on multi-pronged strategies in their desperate bid to open the tunnel, which was blocked by the Sunday morning deluge.
The rescuers have also used remote sensing technologies for geographical mapping of the tunnel.