Rescuers race against time as 9 men are trapped in flooded coal mine in Assam

The site of the incident is in the Kalamati area in Umrangso, in the hilly district of Dima Hasao. The area is remote – around 150 kilometres from the district headquarters Haflong – and the Superintendent of Police, District Collector and other senior government functionaries were yet to reach the site as of 8:30 pm.

“The incident took place in the morning, and rescue teams were rushed there as soon as we were informed. The rescue operations have been ongoing for about seven hours now,” the SP told The Indian Express at 7 pm.

Progress was slow, with two motor pumps working to remove water from the mine pit, reported to be a few hundred feet deep.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announced that the National Disaster Relief Force and the State Disaster Relief Force have been deployed to aid rescue efforts. The Army’s assistance has been requested too.

State Cabinet Minister Kaushik Rai is likely to reach on Tuesday morning. “What we understand is that there were 20-25 workers inside the mine. While the rest came out before it got flooded, nine remain inside. The workers who came out in the morning are in the care of the police. The SDRF has reached the site, the NDRF will reach soon, and the Army has started moving. The rescue operations will start properly tonight,” Rai told The Indian Express on Monday night.

Riki Phukan, the district disaster management official, said that details of what led to the incident were unclear. “No one was there for a clear preliminary report of the incident. Based on pieces of information from locals, we have understood that water entered the mine. From the visuals, we can see that it is a mine with a vertical hole in the ground. We will have a clearer picture of the nature of the mine and the incident tomorrow,” he said.

The site of the incident is located close to Assam’s border with Meghalaya, which had in 2018 witnessed one of the worst mining mishaps of the region when 15 workers died after being trapped in a flooded rat-hole mine in Meghalaya’s East Jaintia Hills. Dima Hasao has widespread coal, limestone and granite quarrying activities, and the coal reserves of Umrangso, where the incident took place, are known as Assam Quarries.