Even after a month since 15 miners got trapped in a flooded rat-hole coalmine at Ksan in Meghalaya’s East Jaintia Hills district, much headway has not been made in draining the water from the mine.
Rescue operations had commenced about 25 days ago to bring back the miners from the 380 ft deep mine
Status quo
“There has been no significant change or receding of (water) level in spite of several lakh of litres pumped out,” the district’s Deputy Commissioner Federick M. Dopth said.
On Saturday, an Indian Air Force AN-32 aircraft flew in two teams with 700 kg of underwater scanners and associated equipment to Guwahati airport from where they were driven to the site.
While a team from National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) was flown in from Hyderabad, another from Planys Technologies was brought from Chennai.
“The Indian Navy had been using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) for underwater scanning meant for larger water bodies. The hunt for a smaller ROV for easier manoeuvring ended in the specialised Chennai firm,” Aditya N. Prasad, who had filed a PIL in the Supreme Court for urgent steps to rescue the miners, told The Hindu .
Mr. Prasad had helped mobilise the team as well as liaise with the Roorkee-based National Institute of Hydrology for assisting in the rescue operations.
The Chennai firm’s ROV is expected to follow the inputs provided by the NGRI radar and go underwater into the tunnels to scan for air pockets and life.
Officials in Meghalaya said the NGRI team with ground penetrating radar would try to map the Ksan mine and pinpoint the horizontal tunnels branching out from its base while Mr. Kumar, using a topographical map, would ascertain the flow and source of water.
Local residents said almost all the 60,000 mines in the area, interconnected by tunnels, were filled with water. “It is an ocean down there, not easy to drain out,” Brian Kharpran Day, an environmentalist, said.
