It took just over an hour to remove the 41 workers trapped in the bowels of the Himalayas in Uttarkashi (India), less than planned for this final phase of the rescue and insignificant considering its more than two weeks of agony. Now, 17 days and a few failed attempts later, They are all out.

To reach them, the work – by hand, inch by inch, piece by piece – of a group of recruited ultra-specialized miners from all over the country, especially the northeast. They have excavated the last meters, centimeters, that allowed them to extract their trapped companions.

Two days have passed piercing the earth through a narrow tube, the same one through which they removed the rubble and through which they have finally been removed. To achieve this, no efforts have been spared by my means: a field hospital He treated the 41 as they left the tunnel, but still inside the mine itself.

More than two weeks later, they have literally seen the light at the end of the tunnel. They have even had to resort to primitive, dangerous and even illegal methods. To those called ‘rat-miners’ which were used, above all, to extract the most elusive coal. :”We are digging by hand, the machines were hindering the work,” explained one of the rescuers.

After the partial collapse of the mining gallery (four and a half kilometers long) on ​​the 12th, the tunnel boring machines opened a path – horizontally and vertically – as far as they could. They also served to deliver supplies, medicines… and communicate with them through an endoscopic camera. That was achieved just a week ago, through a steel conduit.

Then the reinforced tube was placed, which does not reach one meter in diameter, through which the ‘‘rat miners’ got in to dig by hand and reach those trapped. They have been taken out right there, pulling stretchers with wheels. The call ‘burrow technique‘ – digging like rats – has reached where machines have not been able to, extracting a happy endingfor aextreme rescue.