As efforts to rescue the 41 workers trapped inside the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhand go into the final phase, the Australian government says it is also watching closely, given that the engineer leading rescue efforts is an Australian expert, Arnold Dix.
“I am proud that Australia’s Professor Arnold Dix is providing important technical support on the ground to help evacuate the trapped workers,” Australian High Commissioner to India Phillip Green told The Hindu.
“My team has spoken to Dix and commended him on his ongoing contribution. My best wishes go to the Indian government’s rescue efforts,” he added, speaking on the sidelines of the Australia-India Leadership track 1.5 Dialogue organised by the Australia India Institute. The dialogue, which included the High Commissioner, High Commissioner of India to Australia Manpreet Vohra, Australian Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs Tim Watts, former Australian Trade Minister Dan Tehan as well as analysts, strategic experts and business leaders, held discussions on building strategic and economic cooperation, energy transitions and climate change resilience.
The rescue efforts for the workers who have been trapped deep inside the 4.5 km tunnel near Uttarkashi due to landslides since November 12 are being covered in Australian media as interest grows sharper in the fate of the workers. Dix, an Adjunct professor of engineering at Queensland University of Technology, who also practices law, is the President of the Switzerland-based 79-nation “International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association”. He has been camped at Silkyara since November 20 to assist rescue workers who have been battling the young and brittle mountainside as they try to build alternative tunnels through to the men trapped inside.
“Because we are up in the Himalayas, and the Himalayas are technically a very fresh mountain range, which means they’re falling apart,” Prof. Dix told the Australian Broadcast Corporation on November 23, after rescue efforts hit another snag, hitting steel girders as they tried to build the tunnel in.
“That means when you put a tunnel through, you’ve constantly got this risk that there’s going to be a collapse and so as engineers you’re fighting that risk,“ Mr. Dix added.
