Fresh tactic to salvage stranded boats from Krishna River near Prakasam Barrage

On Saturday, of the three entangled boats, one was disentangled with the other two and capsized probably either on the riverbed or rocks, at a depth of nearly 20 feet and 20 metres from the barrage.

As the divers located the exact position of the capsized boat, authorities have come up with another idea to pull it out from the river. The idea is that two other big boats will be connected with a girder and they will be filed with sand and water so that both the connected boats will be lowered into the river exactly at a place where one boat was capsized.

The divers will hook iron chains from the two girded boats to the capsized boat. As a 200-tonne excavator is placed at the irrigation office near Durga Ghat, the capsized boat will be tied to the excavator with a chain. The two girded boats and the excavator will pull the capsized boat at the same time with the expectation that it will rise a little from the riverbed so that it becomes easy to pull it towards the upstream bund.

The two girded boats will clear the sand and water from them so that they will float on the surface water to facilitate pulling the capsized boat.

In case the experts succeed in salvaging the capsized boat, they will disentangle two more stranded boats and pull them up to upstream bund so that all three stranded boats are salvaged.

Retired irrigation engineer K. V. Krishna Rao said, “We will adopt this plan on Sunday to salvage the capsized boat at the first instance, followed by the other two if they are successful in their plan.”

If the stranded boats fail to be removed near the barrage or the river witnesses floods again, they may cause damage to the pillars of the barrage.