GUWAHATI: Mining expert, Jaswant Singh Gill, who had saved the lives of 64 miners in West Bengal in 1989, will arrive at the site in East Jaintia Hills on Thursday where 14 miners are trapped inside a flooded rat-hole mine since the past week, sources said.
The expert has been requested to visit the site by the Meghalaya government after rescue operations carried out by NDRF and SDRF personnel since last Friday did not yield any positive result.
“In fact, the situation today after yesterday’s incessant rain is even more disappointing after we found that the water levels in the main shaft and the Lytein river nearby have risen by little more than two feet despite two 25HP pumps continuously extracting out water from the shaft. Therefore, I do not think that such water extraction by pumps will work further,” Santosh Kumar, assistant commandant, NDRF (1st Battalion), told The Shillong Times on Wednesday evening.
“Tomorrow, we will check the water level again. A mining engineer, Jaswant Singh Gill, who has been honoured for his expertise in saving the lives of 64 miners in Bengal back in 1989, is arriving here by Thursday morning and he will decide what needs to be done further,” Kumar informed.
Experts from the directorate general of mining safety were earlier there at the site.
“The administration has provided about four to five pumps but because they are old, they break down after four-five hours of continuous pumping. They are then repaired, but at any given time, at least two pumps have been kept operational,” he said.
Yesterday, tests done on water samples collected from the flooded main shaft and the Lytein river in East Jaintia Hills confirmed that the water which entered the mine is from the river.
The director of mines safety, who was present at the site, had asked the authorities to examine whether the pH (potential of Hydrogen) of samples of water of the main shaft of the mine matched with that of the water of river and abandoned quarries nearby.