Hope fades for trapped miners
2010-08-19 10:10
Santiago - Chilean authorities acknowledge the odds are against them but are holding out hope that 33 workers are still alive and trapped underground almost two weeks after their copper mine collapsed.
The miners have not been heard from since the entrance of the San Jose mine collapsed on August 5, but engineers and officials believe they may have made it to an emergency shelter 700 metres underground.
Rescuers have managed to drill down to a depth of 540 metres, but Mining Minister Laurence Golborne said on Tuesday that progress had slowed and more precise drilling equipment was needed.
"It's become slow, precision-oriented work," said Golborne, who has warned of days of delays due to the complexity of drilling through hundreds of meters of rock in the mine, which is located near the northern city of Copiapo.
Chilean President Sebastian Pinera also acknowledged the outlook was bleak.
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"I want to be realistic and recognise that the situation is complex," he said. "We are working on a rescue at a depth of 700 metres in a mine which has displayed great instability, but the hope still stands and rescue efforts will continue without pause."
Yet Pinera said "we are holding out some hope, because we have indications that the area in which they are believed to be trapped is where there is some oxygen and water".
Several machines were seeking to establish contact with the miners, and engineers had simultaneously begun drilling six relief ducts in a bid to funnel down plastic tubes known as "doves", which contain water and food.
At the weekend, two of the six drilling machines needed to change to high-precision diamond drill bits, which arrived from the US and Australia.
They replace bits that operate on "reverse air" technology, which are usually used at the beginning of a drill job because of their speed, but do not assure accuracy and are often switched out further into the operation.
"First we have to establish contact with them and then look at possibilities for getting them out," said Golborne, who is overseeing the rescue efforts.
The construction of a larger tunnel has been ruled out because "tunnels generally take months to build and we are talking about long distances, not short ones", the minister said.
Opposition lawmakers have complained that a study prepared in June by the local labour inspectorate had warned about the mine's dangers, stressing that the upper structure of the mine was not fortified enough.
- SAPA