Domalapenta: The rescue operations in the collapsed Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) tunnel are expected to pick up pace with officials expressing hopes that they may be able to find the remains of three or four of the eight missing workers under a debris of silt, rocks, and mangled remains of the tunnel boring machine (TBM) some 13.8 km inside the tunnel.“We are hopeful we can complete this task sometime later tonight or tomorrow,” a senior official supervising the rescue operations said.While previous efforts to dig through nearly five to six metres of silt under which the missing workers are feared to be buried did not result in finding them, fresh efforts to dig through the silt began on Wednesday.“Yesterday, our sniffer dog indicated a spot where rescue workers have started digging. The seepage of water, and sometimes the silt collapsing inside the dugout portion, is challenging but we hope we can find the missing persons,” a rescue official said.Previous spots where rescue workers, including those from the Rat Miners team and Singareni Collieries, based in data from NGRI’s ground penetrating radar dug, did not succeed and officials hope that the NDRF’s sniffer dog, a Labrador Retriever, managed to find what was eluding the combined efforts of all the rescue teams.Officials supervising the rescue operations, meanwhile, said parts of the TBM that were obstructing access to the section of the tunnel and the front portion of the machine have been cut, and a pathway has now been cleared for a small JCB to begin desilting from a side. While one JCB is already at the 13 km point inside the tunnel – the distance to which workers have cleared up the tracks for the locomotive to reach – another smaller one is also expected to be pressed into service for the desilting operations using the conveyor belt system.An official explained that when looking at the tunnel end, “the right side is where people are able to clamber over the machine and walk safely as the debris and the silt has compacted on this side. Seepage is flowing through from the left bringing slush and this is the side of the TBM where the workers were last seen according to some of the 42 who managed to escape to safety when the tunnel collapsed on February 22.”“We are really hopeful that we will make definite headway in locating the missing persons in the next 24 to 48 hours,” the senior official said.Representatives from NV Robotics visited the tunnel on Tuesday to explore the possibility of the extent to which any robots may be pressed into service to augment the rescue efforts. It may be recalled that the government had said it was exploring every possible avenue to speed up the rescue efforts, and as part of this, was considering employing robots if this option is found viable. Officials said the company’s representatives said they will get back after assessing how much they can contribute to the ongoing efforts.
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