Assam coal mine tragedy: Rescue operation enters 4th day, no sign of trapped miners

Rescuers are battling against time in Assam as therescue operation to save eight miners trapped in a flooded illegal rat-hole mine continues for a fourth day in a row.

Fifteen labourers were on Monday trapped inside the 3-kilo coal quarryin Umrangso, some 250 km from Guwahati, after a sudden gush of water flooded the underground site.

Six miners, however, managed to crawl out. On Wednesday night, therescuers found the body of one miner but the fate of the eight others are still not known. The mine is located in Dima Hasao district.

Also read: Assam mining incident: 1 dead, confirms CM; rescue ops in full swing

Groping in the dark

The search operations resumed early on Thursday after a dewatering exercise all night.

A remotely operated vehicle (ROV) sent into the flooded shaft was being used to locate the trapped miners “despite the extremely hostile and difficult situation”, a police officer said.

According to officials, the water inside the mine was totally black making it difficult to locate anything.

Also read: Assam: 3 of 9 workers trapped in coal mine dead; Navy roped in for rescue operation

Agencies at work

Four deep naval divers went inside the shaft but could not locate either the survivors or bodies.

Naval divers, soldiers, rescuers from the NDRF and SDRF as well as personnel from the Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC) and Coal India are all involved in the rescue efforts.

Coal India has flown in a heavy pressure pump with a capacity to pump out 500 gallons per minute from Maharashtra. The pump is on its way to the mine site.

De-flooding the mine

Already half-a-dozen pumps were working but the heavy siltation in water was creating problems for the pumps. “We now need heavy submersible pumps and it is being arranged," one official said.

The National Green Tribunal banned rat-hole mining in 2014. However, coal is still extracted by this dangerous method in the north-east.

The official said the shaft was 310 feet deep.

One body found

“Multiple channels were carved out through rat-hole technique from the shaft,” an expert told PTI.

“We assume a wall of one of the channels was breached and the entire shaft has been flooded. There is also a possibility that one of the channels reached an unused nearby mine that was already flooded. Another possibility is one channel might have reached an underground reservoir and water gushed in suddenly,” added the expert.

The body of a missing worker recovered by Army divers on Wednesday was identified as Ganga Bahadur Srestho from Udaypur district of Nepal. The body was found 85 feet below the surface.