As uncertainty wrapped over the mountains of Silkyara, as back to back glitches delayed the rescue operation, how consistent effort of a group of miners, with the assistance of modern technologies ultimately saved 41 lives is nothing but a victory of hope.
Due to the collapse of a part of the under-construction tunnel from Silkyara to Barkot, on November 12, on the famous Char Dham route in Uttarakhand, 41 workers got trapped. After 17 days of continuous efforts by miners, engineers, and international experts, they were rescued safely. However, this wouldn't be possible without application of modern technologies. In this article, we will be focusing on the advanced technologies used for this rescue operation. Go through for more details.
On the tenth day of the rescue operation, the team successfully inserted the advanced Endoscopic flexi camera. This helped interacting with the trapped workers. Generally, surgeons use this camera for any minimally invasive procedure. Sometimes, to check the condition of internal organs, these cameras are used. The modern endoscopic cameras implement "chip-on-tip" technology, which helps recording images through a tiny package, fastened to the end of the camera. To get proper images, the camera uses the LEDs to illuminate the intended area.
GPR is a technique to detect structural changes and material differences, which sometimes go unnoticed by other “non-intrusive and non-destructive technique”. This is a minimally invasive method to enable the identification of underground material without even disturbing ground. GPR implement the power of electromagnetic waves to prepare subsurface images. Additionally, GPR uses radio waves to get below-surface images. GPR equipment is made up of a waveform generator, a signal processor, a transducer with emitting and receiving antennas, and a data storage or display unit.
This radar helped viewing underground up to 5 meters that helped the rescue team to distinguish obstacles like rock and debris during Augur drilling machine. Through the moving antennas across the ground, GPR data was collected, by recording the transmissions and receptions at various areas. These recordings were later merged to create an image named a “radargram”.
The auger machine is generally used for horizontal drilling method. Through this huge auger drill, which looks like a corkscrew like-device, comprised of a rotary blade at the front-end. For the initial part of the rescue operation, auger drilling is employed, however, they had to face multiple obstacles in the form of rocks and hard metal structures. The major disadvantage of this type of drilling is it creats a lot of debris which complicated the rescue operation initially.
Robotics were perfectly utilised during this rescue operation. Robotics expert Milind Raj said that “the mental well-being of trapped workers were monitored through robots by using homegrown indigenous technology for the same. This robotic system has three things. It has a gas detection system; apart from this, it provided internet service and also monitored the health of the trapped labourers from a distance of 100 metres from its position.”
“Before this, a building had collapsed in Lucknow, in which 14 people were saved alive. We used the same robotic system in the operations,” he added
Victory of hope! 41 workers trapped in the Silkyara Tunnel of Uttarkashi for 17 days were successfully rescued. Kudos to the relentless efforts of the rescue teams, and PM @narendramodi for closely monitoring every moment of this operation. The leadership at Ground Zero has been… pic.twitter.com/6HLDJfshUW
— Doordarshan National दूरदर्शन नेशनल (@DDNational) November 30, 2023
There's a famous quote from the film Shawshank Redemption: “Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” The rescue operation aptly described the same. The courage, the hope, the consistent effort, everything was fruitful as the workers were rescued safely.
“It was a difficult task. But nothing is difficult for us,” said a beaming Feroze Qureshi, one of the rescue team members after the operation.
