15 Meghalaya Miners Still Trapped

By Dilip -
Two weeks have passed and 15 Meghalaya miners are still trapped in a coal mine in East Jaintia Hills district. As the rescue operations continue, NDRF divers reported a “foul smell” on Wednesday. It has raised concerns that the miners could be dead and the bodies are beginning to decompose, according to The Indian Express. 

However, according to another NDTV report, the officials at the site said they are not certain whether the foul smell is of decomposed bodies as it could be from stagnant water also.  The 15 miners have been trapped since 13 December, after the mine collapsed.  The NDTV report also said that rescue operations were halted on Tuesday. Chief Minister Conrad Sagma admitted on Wednesday that the rescue efforts had been stopped and that the state was waiting for high-powered pumps to draw out water from the mine.   

Two low-capacity pumps used to draw water could not extract enough water for safe rescue operations, according to NDTV, as water from a nearby river and another abandoned mine kept flooding the rat-hole mine. The small pumps had to be shut down as they were ineffective, the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) was quoted as saying in the report. Pune-based Kirloskar Brothers Limited, a firm that had helped rescue the 12 boys of a Thailand football team in July, 2018, has offered to help in rescue operations... read more:
https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/meghalaya-miners-still-trapped-rescuers-detect-foul-smell-as-govt-waits-for-high-power-pumps_in_5c2473d3e4b05c88b6fd8c97?utm_hp_ref=in-homepage

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