A major operation concluded on Tuesday when laborers who had been trapped for over two weeks were recovered
All 41 construction workers who had been trapped in a 4.5km tunnel for more than two weeks in India were finally evacuated on Tuesday night.
The men were pulled out on wheeled stretchers one by one through a large pipe that rescuers in the northern state of Uttarakhand had pushed through debris and rocks.
Medical teams had been on standby for days to assess the condition of the men once they were rescued, and transport them to the nearby hospitals without delay. According to media reports, the roads adjacent to the entrance of the blocked tunnel had to be quickly repaired, having become uneven due to the regular movement of heavy vehicles in the vicinity in recent days.
Medical experts at the site said the workers would need long-term support and monitoring for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), reports noted. “All 41 would experience some post-traumatic symptoms like insomnia, recurrent bad dreams, recurrent reliving of the tunnel collapse, anxiety,” Dr. Dinakaran D of the state-run National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences told Al Jazeera.
The rescue operation hit several snags due to the nature of the Himalayan terrain and equipment failure, which prolonged the rescue. Initially, excavators sought to dig horizontally through the debris, awaiting the delivery of a wide steel pipe that would serve as a passageway for the workers to exit the tunnel. However, large rocks blocked the process. Loose debris, boulders, cement blocks, and iron rods inside the tunnel further delayed the mission.
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