HYDERABAD: With clearing and cleaning up operations inside the SLBC tunnel expected to be completed soon in the collapsed tunnel’s safe zone, officials and experts will discuss on Thursday the way forward. The meeting is expected to take a call on whether or not to continue the search for the still six workers, whose bodies are believed to be buried in the tunnel’s no-go zone in the final 50 metres.The committee comprising NDRF, NGRI, GSI, National Centre for Seismology, National Institute of Rock Mechanics, Border Roads Organization, SDRF, irrigation department, and some senior government officials, is scheduled to meet in Hyderabad.With experts from GSI, NGRI, and other scientific agencies suggesting that the piled-up silt and rocks reaching up to the tunnel roof at the collapse point faces the danger of sliding and could result in a fresh collapse, there has been a question mark on how to continue the search, or it needs to be called off.Earlier, experts from the Geological Survey of India had said that the area near the tunnel face where rocks and soil collapsed into the tunnel “is in a critical stage of stability” due to continuous water flow, and deformation of precast segments holding up the tunnel sides. If the muck removal continues, the GSI said the “natural platform” that formed with the collapsed material covering and burying part of the tunnel boring machine and acting like a plug preventing further collapse, might be disturbed and may result in a fresh collapse.The committee’s mandate includes not just how to continue with the rescue work in the final stretch of the tunnel covered with rocks and silt, but do without putting rescuers in harm’s way, to extricate the bodies of the six missing workers and hand them over to their families in a time bound manner. The final decisions will be based on advice from the experts, and work is expected to be carried out after necessary approvals, and permissions from the appropriate agencies.
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