Six workers missing from Suizhou tunnel construction site

Six workers went missing while working on tunnel construction in Central China's Hubei province after water and mud rushed into the site on Friday. Now the rescue team has reached the tunnel’s complex geological area where the workers were trapped after 65-hour rescue, a local authority said on Monday.

The 14km-long tunnel under construction is in Suizhou city.

According to the publicity department of the Suizhou committee of the Communist Party of China, the rescue team had pumped out more than 5,200 cubic meters of mud by Monday afternoon and was approaching the trapped workers’ location, 250 meters from the tunnel’s entrance.

On Friday afternoon, the six workers entered the tunnel to shore up pipe roofs. Nothing wrong was discovered until midnight, when the next shift's workers couldn't continue through the tunnel after finding one-meter-thick sludge, 450 meters from the entrance.

According to the local authority, more than 60 firefighters and nine professional rescue teams responded to the rescue and several pieces of high-tech equipment were utilized, including life detection instruments, a seismic detector, satellite communication vehicle and emergency sludge-pumping vehicle.