Indian rescue teams on Saturday began drilling vertical holes from a hilltop into a collapsed tunnel where 41 workers have been trapped for two weeks in the Himalayas, after another failure in horizontal drilling just meters from the target.

Only nine meters remained to drill through the rubble to insert the final section of the 57 meter long steel tube, wide enough for a man to pass through, and allowing workers to evacuate. However, the drill then collided with metal rods and construction vehicles blocking the road, damaging the machine beyond repair.

“Work is underway to bypass and clear the blockage,” Abhishek Ruhela, a senior local official, told AFP on Saturday.

Ambulances have been on standby and a field hospital has been prepared to accommodate the men, who have been trapped since a section of tunnel under construction in Silkyara, in the northern state of Uttarakhand, collapsed on November 12.

– “Final phase” –

Since the collapse, rescue efforts have been complicated and slowed by falling debris and the failure of drills crucial to rescuing workers.

“Work to reach the workers trapped inside is in the final stages,” continued Mr. Ruhela, “all possible options to reach them are being considered.”

Rescue teams were still trying to reach the people through the main entrance, and were now trying to open the road without training, rescue officials said.

But a new borehole has been started from a wooded hilltop overlooking the tunnel, which will attempt to reach the tunnel 89 meters below, a complex excavation operation above stranded people, in an area that has already experienced a collapse.

The region’s minister, Pushkar Singh Dhami, confirmed on Saturday afternoon that excavations had begun from the hilltop.

He also said he could talk to people trapped under the tunnel. “They were in good spirits. They said: ‘Take as much time as you need, don’t worry about us,'” he said.

Inside the men’s tunnel there is a relatively large space, approximately two kilometers long and 8.50 m high.

– Third option –

Work has begun to dig a third but longer lane at the other end of the road tunnel, estimated to be around 480 metres.

The trapped workers have been surviving for two weeks on air, food, water and electricity delivered through a duct equipped with an endoscopic camera, so their families were able to see them for the first time on Tuesday since the tunnel collapsed.

Stretchers on wheels were provided to evacuate exhausted people when they could be reached.

Since Wednesday, authorities have said several times that they expect encouraging results in the coming hours. But the government warned that the situation is “likely to develop due to technical problems, difficult terrain (which is) the Himalayas, and unforeseen circumstances”. And this is what happened with the cessation of drilling in the tunnel.

Also on Saturday, a plasma cutting machine was brought in to allow blocked machines as well as metal rods and other vehicles blocking the tunnel to be removed from the excavation, so they could continue digging by hand.

The Silkyara Tunnel is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cherished Char Dham highway project, designed to improve connections with four of the country’s most important Hindu sites and also with China’s border regions.

In January, at least 200 people died in flash floods in Uttarakhand. Experts partly blamed the disaster on excessive development in the Himalayan state, much of which is prone to landslides.