India rescued all 41 workers trapped in a collapsed tunnel from 17 days

The 41 men, who have been stuck in the tunnel in India’s state of Uttarakhand, since it collapsed on Nov. 12 were rescued after “rat miners”.

All attempts to drill a tunnel horizontally through the debris trapping the men have been plagued by damage to machinery and rescuers began drilling by hand after clearing away the broken equipment inside the narrow evacuation pipe.

The men have been getting food, water, light, oxygen and medicines through a pipe but efforts to dig a tunnel to rescue them with high-powered drilling machines were frustrated by a series of snags.

rat miners drilled the rocks where heavy machinery failed

Government agencies managing the unprecedented crisis turned on Monday to “rat miners” to drill through the rocks and gravel by hand from inside a 3-feet-wide evacuation pipe pushed through the debris after machinery failed.

“Rat mining” is a primitive, hazardous and controversial method used in India mostly to remove coal deposits through narrow passages. The name comes from its resemblance to rats burrowing through narrow holes.

The “rat miners”, worked through Monday night and finally broke through the estimated 200 feet of rocks, earth and metal on Tuesday afternoon.

The tunnel is part of the $1.5 billion Char Dham highway, one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s most ambitious projects, aimed at connecting four Hindu pilgrimage sites through a 550-mile network of roads.

The region is prone to landslides, earthquakes and floods. The project has faced criticism from environmental experts, and some work was halted after hundreds of houses were damaged by subsidence along the route.