Chamoli tunnel accident: On Thursday evening, the under-construction Mayapur-Pipalkoti tunnel in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district suddenly flooded with water. The district administration launched a rescue operation and safely evacuated 22 workers, while seven workers—hailing from Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand—lost their lives.
Eleven workers are reported injured; they include five from Jharkhand, two from Bihar, two from Chhattisgarh, and one each from Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. Six workers remain missing. Notably, a loco train had also collided inside this same tunnel last December.
A surge of debris rushed in
The events that unfolded on Thursday evening inside the under-construction tunnel of the Vishnugad-Pipalkoti Hydroelectric Project became a life-or-death struggle for the workers present. Mountain debris and water surged into the tunnel with such speed that the workers had no time to even comprehend the situation. Sunil Diwan, an injured worker from Chhattisgarh, recounted that he was tying reinforcement bars (rebar) inside the tunnel when the landslide occurred.
