Rescue agencies plan to extend conveyor belt further to speed up debris removal at SLBC tunnel

Rescue agencies extend conveyor belt in SLBC tunnel to speed up debris removal, with efforts ongoing to trace buried bodies.

HYDERABAD

The rescue agencies taking part in the efforts to trace the bodies of six more persons buried under the debris in the Srisailalm Left Bank Canal (SLBC) tunnel from February 22, on Thursday decided to extend the conveyor belt facility till the last mile in the tunnel to speed up debris digging and removal.

On the 48th day of the rescue operation on Thursday, the multi-agency teams were engaged in hardened silt/debris digging and removal along with the pieces of tunnel boring machine (TBM) damaged in the tunnel collapse by cutting them into small pieces to enable them loading onto the locomotive. Five mini-excavators are being employed in the digging work and in loading the debris onto the conveyor belt, now available till 13.730 km inside the tunnel from its mouth.

According to officials, efforts are on to extend the conveyor belt for another 200 metres or till 13.930 km, till which the tunnel is being considered safe. The remaining few meters is yet to be touched even for debris removal considering the unstable strata of the tunnel due to which it reportedly collapsed. It had become unstable due to continuous seepage of water from the roof and a side of the tunnel and the sudden burst of water in the layers of rocks forced it to cave in on February 22 morning.

The tunnel from 13.930 km has been strengthened with wooden formations to prevent any chances of further roof collapse by underground miners from the Singareni Collieries.

The bodies of only two of the eight persons trapped under the debris in the collapse have been recovered so far – one on March 9 and another on March 25.

Special Officer appointed to supervise the rescue operation and coordinate with various agencies involved in the exercise Siva Sankar Lotheti held a meeting with the tunnel inlet office of the work agency, Jaypee Associates, near Domalapenta village in Amrabad mandal of Nagarkurnool district. He stated that dewatering was being done continuously with the help of a five-stage pumping system with a total capacity of 3,000 HP pump-sets.