SHILLONG: The state and central governments have filed their respective status reports on the ongoing rescue operations at the Ksan mine, Lumthari, East Jaintia Hills in the Supreme Court.
The Shillong Times has the full status report filed by the state government.
What is interesting is the letter written by Deputy Commissioner, East Jaintia Hills, FM Dopth, dated December 13, 2018 and addressed to the Commandant, 1st Battalion NDRF, Patgaon, Kamrup District of Assam.
The subject of the letter is: Request to ‘sent’ a team of National Disaster Response Force.
The letter says, …”With reference to the subject cited above, I am to inform you that information has been received that around thirteen (13) persons including 3 (three) locals of Lumthari Village were trapped in a coal quarry at Ksan near Letein river under Lumshyrngan village under Saipung PS. Due to overflowing of water the dead bodies are still trapped inside and could not be seen. Efforts are being made to recover the dead bodies by pumping the water with the help of generator and is in progress.
In this connection, you are requested to depute team to this District for rescue operation immediately..”
The word rescue according to the Cambridge Dictionary is to help someone or something out of a dangerous, harmful, or unpleasant situation.
The Collins Dictionary says almost the same thing – A rescue is an attempt to save someone from a dangerous or unpleasant situation.
The DC, FM Dopth, has however already decided that the miners are dead and his call to the NDRF is to recover the dead bodies; not to rescue the miners in case by some stroke of fate they still happen to be alive.
Is the DC acting from past experience when every mine tragedy he has heard of in Meghalaya has resulted in death? Hence his subconscious mind dictates that the 15 miners inside the Ksan mine are also already dead? Is this why the rescue process is so tardy and delayed?
To have the 100 HP Kirloskar pumps to arrive 15 days after the tragedy is a case of “too little too late.” Every effort made here is wasted because of the interminable delay with the DC taking leave in between.
Again the DC, while writing to the Additional Chief Secretary in charge Revenue and Disaster Management, rued as to whether the government would sanction the necessary funds required for human resources and materials for the rescue operations. He also said he consulted the Sordar of the area and a mine manager experienced in dealing with flooding of mines and reported that they observed it would take between 30-60 days to pump water out of a single mine since about 20 mines are interlinked.
The DC asked if it was, “advisable to venture into the ‘Mass’ operation as per the inputs offered by the Sordar and the Director of Mines Safety which at the end of the day if mining is still banned by NGT, we may not be able to retrieve the missing persons.”
The official tentativeness and lack of preparedness in the present rescue operation is clearly visible.
Meanwhile, Dr Sarpreet Singh Gill, son of Mining Engineer, Jaswant Singh Gill, who had offered his services to save the 15 miners in East Jaintia Hills and arrived here in the early days of the disaster, speaking to The Shillong Times, said, “We compare the Meghalaya rescue operation to the Thai cave rescue and the Chile rescue mission. Why do we forget that the greatest rescue in mining history was done in India in November 1989 when 65 miners were saved from the Mahabir Colliery, Raniganj within 72 hours using the capsule technique.”
When asked why the capsule technique was not used in the Ksan mine, Dr Gill said it would not work here because there is no mine plan and the size of the rat holes is too small. However, he said his father had offered solutions as soon as he heard of the accident.
Clearly, rat hole mining defies all norms of sustainable mining practices. No one in the world has any experience of this mining practice. So a rescue operation in this sort of mine poses a new challenge for the world.
Interested readers are also posing questions as to why an experienced hydrologist who has scientific knowledge about how water moves across and through the earth’s crust and is also best placed to assess the source of the flow into the mine and perhaps plug that leak was not brought in.
Meanwhile, stand-up comedian Abhineet Mishraa, who is from Meghalaya and is currently based in Mumbai, has done a parody to draw attention to the mining disaster here and to shake the conscience of the Indian mainstream citizenry and media.