GUWAHATI: Rescue teams engaged in operations to detect the 13 miners trapped inside a flooded rat hole mine in East Jaintia Hills since Thursday will match the water in the main shaft with that of the Lytein river nearby to ascertain whether water from the river is entering the mine.
Till Monday evening, none of the miners could be traced as the “water level” in the main shaft could not be reduced much even as three pumps provided by the administration were in operation.
The directorate general, mines safety is monitoring the operations with the director of mines safety visiting the site on Monday.
“The director of mines safety was present at the site today and he has asked us to examine whether the pH (potential of Hydrogen) of samples of water of the main shaft of the mine matches with that of the water of river and abandoned quarries nearby. If it matches then it can be established that river water has entered the shaft and it will be difficult to pull out the water,” Santosh Kumar, assistant commandant, NDRF (1st Battalion), told The Shillong Times on Monday evening.
pH is a measure of acidity or alkalinity of water soluble substances. A pH value is a number from 1 to 14, with 7 as the neutral point. Values below 7 indicate acidity, which increases as the number decreases.
Water in mines is usually acidic in nature where the ph value is less than five, whereas the river water has a ph value of over seven, which is alkaline in nature.
Apparently, both water levels (in flooded shaft and river) are almost equal, which is why the pumps used by the administration are not giving the desired result even as water is being extracted out of the shaft. “Therefore, the personnel deployed by the administration to operate the water pumps are finding it difficult to pull out the water. Two additional pumps have broken down as well,” Kumar said.
“If you are deploying heavy pumps to extract water from a tunnel connected to the river, there is very little chance that the water level can be reduced,” he said.
“We start our operations from first light (dawn) and end by last light (dusk). The operations will start again early tomorrow morning,” he said.
