Uttarkashi tunnel collapse: Rat-hole miners began manual drilling on Monday after vertical drilling from the top of the hill maked swift progress as 36 metres of drilling work in a bid to reach the 41 trapped workers in the Silkyara tunnel, according to officials. Now the drilling work is being done to lay an 800/900 mm or 1.2 m diameter pipeline to aid the rescue. The officials adopted a new approach yesterday evening, and began drilling into the hill above the Silkyara-Barkot tunnel on Sunday, boring nearly 20 metres on the first day. The vertical approach was one of the at least five options on which preparatory work had begun a few days back. The vertical boring option was picked as the next best alternative after the latest in a series of snags that hit the horizontal drilling operation from the tunnel’s Silkyara-end, where an estimated 60-metre stretch of rubble faced rescue workers.
