Water recedes at Assam coal mine where miners are trapped

Water levels in the 300-feet deep flooded coal mine in Assam’s Dima Hasao district receded by nearly 23 feet on Friday, boosting rescue efforts to locate eight workers trapped inside, The Hindu reported.

Not much progress had been made in locating the workers, who have been trapped inside the illegal rat-hole mine in the industrial town of Umrangso since Monday, despite efforts to drain the water using heavy pumps and scan the vertical shaft using sonar equipment.

However, the process of dewatering, or draining three abandoned mines within 500 metres of the flooded one, helped lower the water levels inside, District Magistrate Simanta Kumar Das said on Friday.

The three abandoned mines may be interconnected with the flooded mine by passages of narrow tunnels, according to The Hindu. The three mines were said to have been abandoned before rat-hole mining was banned in 2014.

“We noticed a significant improvement after five pumps were used on Friday to dewater the mines,” The Hindu quoted Das as saying. “The water level of the mine where the miners are trapped went down by about seven metres.”

The dewatering process was expected to speed up once the heavy pressure pump brought in from Maharashtra by Coal India Limited on Thursday began operating, the district magistrate added.

“It is a complex process,” Das said. “But we hope to...

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