Rescuers in India began using heavy machinery today to install a large steel pipeline and bring to the surface about 40 workers trapped underground after a road tunnel collapsed in the Himalayas.

The 4.5 km long tunnel under construction on a highway, part of a Hindu pilgrimage route in the state of Uttarakhand, collapsed around 5:30 am on Sunday.

“We are providing food, water and oxygen to the trapped workers and officials are in constant touch with everyone,” said Devendra Singh Patwal, a disaster management official.

Excavators have been removing the debris for two days to create a walkway to the workers, while a wide steel pipe is expected to be delivered, which will be placed in a hole that will be opened in the debris so that those trapped can climb to the surface.

Patual said it is not easy to estimate the time it will take to retrieve all the workers.

A team of geologists has arrived at the site with the aim of determining the causes of the accident.

At the time of the collapse, there were 50 to 60 workers in the tunnel, of whom about 10 to 20 had started to come out as their shift was over and thus managed to escape. The rest were trapped by the collapse, the Indian Express newspaper reported, citing a worker who was able to get out.

“Initially we thought it was going to be a small collapse and started removing the debris as best we could,” Rajiv Das told the paper. “But we soon realized it was a difficult search and rescue operation.”

Landslides, earthquakes and floods often occur in the area. Land subsidence had been observed before the accident, which state geologists, residents and officials had attributed to the many construction projects taking place in the mountains.

The tunnel project started in 2018 and was originally scheduled to be completed in July 2022, now the new completion date is May 2024, according to an announcement by the Indian government.

Controversial work

The San Dham Pilgrimage Highway is one of the most ambitious plans of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It aims to connect four Hindu sites in northern India with an 889km two-lane highway at a total cost of $1.5 billion.

But some work has been suspended following an order by local authorities after hundreds of houses were damaged by landslides along the road, including in areas in Uttarakhand state.

Environmentalists have also voiced their opposition to the project.

An expert committee appointed by the Supreme Court of India in its report in July 2020 found that the project’s impact on the areas along the highway was not properly assessed before the start of work.

While approving the Sar Dam highway in 2021, the Supreme Court had asked the government to respond to the committee’s concerns and come up with a concrete strategy to protect the environment.

The head of that commission resigned last year, outraged that the government was not implementing its recommendations. India’s federal government, for its part, emphasizes that it is using environmentally friendly techniques to make geologically unstable areas safer.

Uttarakhand state Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami told news agency ANI today that his government will review all under-construction tunnels to ensure that they are completely safe and authorities are better prepared to deal with any emergency.