Bhubaneswar: The nation heaved a sigh of relief and prayed to the Almighty after the 41 labourers trapped inside the under-construction Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhand’s Uttarkashi were hauled out of the tunnel one after one after 17 days of ordeal on Tuesday evening. At the same time, celebrations broke out across the nation, especially the native places of the rescued labourers.
While the entire nation is proud of the rescuers, who achieved a Herculean task on Tuesday despite the failure of high-tech machines engaged in the rescue operation, everyone, including the Prime Minister, is swollen with pride over the resilience and vigour shown by the trapped labourers.
After coming out of the dark tunnel, the labourers described their experience of the last 17 days. Dhiren Naik of Udlar village of Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district has been working on tunnels in Uttarakhand for almost three years but he never faced such a problem.
He said, “We went to work inside the tunnel at 8.00 pm on November 11 and by the time I was returning from work, the tunnel was blocked.” “We had no contact from the outside world for 18 hours. As per our training, we opened a water pipe soon after we were trapped. When the water started falling, the people outside understood that there were people stuck and started sending us oxygen through that pipe.”
“Initially, our communication with the outside world was through that pipe. Nuts, cashews, raisins, gram etc. reached us through that pipe. We spent the first 10 days only eating dry fruits and khichdi (porridge made with rice and dal) was sent to us in bottles on the 11th day.”
“Even though they were in a lot of adverse conditions inside the tunnel, our morale did not break because we were together and there was hope for rescue,” he said. Later rice, bread and pulses were sent through six-inch pipes. After about 10, or 12 days, we were able to talk to the family members. Despite the difficult situation, however, the water and the phone line were not cut inside the tunnel.”
Later, talking to Prime Minister Narendra Modi through video-conferencing on Wednesday, Gabbar Singh Negi, foreman on the labourers’, echoed Dhiren Naik’s views. “Although we were in a critical situation, we never lost hope as we knew that efforts were being made to rescue us. We were like a team, we shared our food and problems, ate together and played various games to keep us engaged.”
When asked how they differentiated between day and night, Negi said, “We used our mobile phones to check the time. In the later stage, the local authorities provided us with mobile phones, torches, walky-talkies and even a landline phone.”
Another rescued labourer said, “Since we had nothing to do except eat and lie down, we tried to keep ourselves busy by undertaking various activities. Besides playing some games, we regularly did morning and night walks in the 2.5-km stretch of the tunnel that was open to us. One of our friends knew yoga and he made us practice yoga regularly.”
Akhilesh Singh, a youth from Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh who was also rescued on Tuesday, told the Prime Minister, “We hope we will be able to return home after a week. And after that, I will take a break of two months from work.”
