Indian officials have warned that the chances of survival for eight people believed to have been trapped in a collapsed tunnel for several days are remote, after a rush of silt and water caused the ceiling to cave in over the weekend.
The group was working on the Srisailam Left Bank Canal tunnel project in the southern Indian state of Telangana, a decades-long effort to build one of the world’s longest irrigation tunnels, which has been plagued by a series of delays since construction began in 2005.
The workers were about nine miles inside the tunnel on Saturday morning when the roof collapsed after a rush of silt and water, according to local officials and news reports. Some escaped, but eight were left trapped behind a tunnel-boring machine that blocked their exit.
“Water gushed in and the roof caved in,” Manoj Gaur, the chairman of Jaiprakash Associates, the Indian construction company that is co-managing the project, said in an interview. “The tunnel is a big tunnel with a diameter of more than 10 meters. Imagine most of that height being filled with water, stone and mud.”
Rescuers have not been able to communicate with the workers since the accident, and their conditions were unclear on Monday. Nine agencies, including the Indian Army and Marine Commandos, are working together on rescue efforts.
Among them are members of a team that led a rescue effort in 2023 to save 41 workers after they were trapped for 17 days in a collapsed tunnel in Uttarakhand, a northern Indian state. Activists and environmentalists had long warned that the multibillion-dollar road-widening project would destabilize the mountainous territory, and said it ultimately caused a landslide that led to the disaster.
Jupally Krishna Rao, a Telangana state minister who was helping to oversee the rescue efforts, said the odds were dwindling that the victims in this weekend’s tunnel collapse would be found alive.
“I can’t predict the chances of survival, but the chances are not very good,” Mr. Krishna Rao told Indian news outlets. “But even if there is the slightest chance, we will try to save them.”
By Monday morning, rescuers were reported to have reached the tunnel boring machine blocking the area. But their efforts were hampered by severe debris and silt buildup, which in some places was reportedly six to seven feet high.
Pragati Krishnapuradoddi Byregowda contributed reporting from New Delhi.
