Four days on, efforts to rescue Assam coal miners hindered by floodwater

Operations to rescue workers trapped inside a 300-foot deep coal mine in Assam’s Dima Hasao district entered their fourth day on Thursday with no success so far, reported PTI.

Officials from the Navy, Army, National Disaster Response Force, State Disaster Response Force, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Coal India and the district administration are collaborating on the rescue.

On Thursday, Inspector Roshan Kumar Singh, commander of the National Disaster Response Force team, said that despite efforts to drain water using heavy pumps and scan the vertical shaft using sonar equipment, not much progress had been made in locating the trapped workers due to the amount of water still trapped in the mine.

A remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, was deployed in the mine in the early morning after some of the floodwater was drained overnight.

“So far, nothing has been detected by the ROV,” an unidentified Assam Police official told PTI. “It is trying very hard to locate the trapped miner despite the extremely hostile and difficult situation. The water inside is totally blackened and it is creating problems in finding anything.”

Four Navy deep divers entered the flooded shaft to help locate the trapped miners, the Assam Police official said.

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