By Dipankar Roy
KSAN: Kirloskar Brothers inserted high-power submersible pumps into the main shaft of the mine where the 15 miners are believed to be trapped since December 13.
A couple of hundred metres down the slope from the mine, Coal India Limited (CIL) put in their submersible pump in an abandoned mine shaft to draw out water.
In two more abandoned mines in close proximity, the Odisha Fire Service personnel had put in their pumps after a bit of improvisation and drew out water from these discharging it into the closest point of the Lytein river over a hundred metres away.
The operations to rescue the trapped miners on Friday, Day 22, were still being carried out on the strength of “prayers” and “assumptions.”
“There is little else to go by,” said J K Borah, GM, NECL, a unit of CIL, as he watched his men prepare to send down the pump. “We are working on assumptions and prayers in the absence of any information about the mines here,” he told The Shillong Times.
Sukanta Sethi, Chief Fire Officer of Odisha Fire Service, echoed him even as he lent a hand to his team trying to guide one of their men down in an improvised basket — held by a rope operated by a crane — along with a pump.
“We suspect these mines may be linked to the main one and will dewater these in the hope that the water level in the one caught in the accident too will recede,” he said. “But it is all assumption. We will try our best and also pray that we are successful in the end,” he said.
Borah spoke of the same predicament. “If the water level in the main mine goes down when we drain out water from this one, we will know that the two are connected, but till then we know nothing,” he said. “Let’s hope for the best.”
By the end of the day, the Odisha Fire Service personnel had managed to pump out 9 lakh litres of water while CIL and Kirloskar Brothers personnel were still engaged in rigging their pumps. Come Saturday, their submersible pumps are expected to start working.
As for the Navy divers, they have had little to do after the first dive when they realised that with the given level of water diving was unsafe. “We don’t want another tragedy on our hands,” said one of them as a few others concentrated on the one-man recompression chamber. “That is to treat cases of decompression sickness a diver may be hit with,” he added.
By the Navy’s count, the water is 49 metres deep in the main shaft while the depth from ground level to the surface is 64 metres. They have earlier asked that the water level be reduced to 30 metres for the divers to go back in.
“We are hoping the entire exercise will come to a conclusive end,” he said. “But then we have little to go by,” he said. Borah and Sethi echoed.
Amidst the spread of an array of tools and implements — small, big and humungous — is a 65 HP pump of the Odisha Fire Service. A small garland of flowers adorns it. Was some puja performed to seek blessings for the operation?
“No, it is from the last Viswakarma puja,” Sethi explained with a smile. Made of paper, the garland is still ‘fresh’ — more than three months after Viswakarma puja and the journey from Bhubaneswar.
If the rescuers are looking for omens for a happy ending to their endeavour, this could just be the good one.