Tunnel collapse in India: How are rescuers going to get 40 construction workers out safely?

Rescuers inside a collapsed road tunnel.
This photo provided by Uttarakhand State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) shows rescuers inside a collapsed road tunnel where more than 30 workers were trapped by a landslide in northern in Uttarakhand state, India, Sunday, Nov.12, 2023. SDRF via AP

A partial tunnel collapse in India has rescuers scrambling to rescue 40 construction workers trapped under the debris. 

As of Tuesday, all 40 laborers were alive — a remarkable development given the dangerous conditions posed by such a disaster, and the risks involved in getting the men out, says Daniel Aldrich, a Northeastern professor and director of the university’s Security and Resilience Program and co-director at the Global Resilience Institute.

The collapse, located in the state of Uttarakhand, underscores just how precarious conditions on job sites are in India — a country of 1.4 billion people — where regulatory oversight can’t keep pace with the rate of development, Aldrich says.   

“We always say that an accident is never a single moment, although we often see it as a single moment,” Aldrich says. “An accident is a series of mistakes.”

India’s construction industry has experienced considerable growth in recent years — but at a high cost: a rate of roughly 38 fatalities per day, according to one analysis from a construction management firm. According to Al Jazeera, some 200 people — a majority of them construction workers — died following flash floods in Uttarakhand caused by a glacier breaking away. Experts then pointed to the country’s unbridled development as partly to blame in the disaster.

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