THE 33 miners trapped under Chile’s Atacama desert yesterday began preparing for their imminent rescue with a detailed medical check-up and a prescription of aspirin to prevent hypertension or blood clots as they are hauled nearly half a mile to the surface.
Emergency workers sent down special equipment to monitor the men’s heart rates, respiration and skin temperature, said Chile’s health minister, Jaime Manalich. If the rescue goes ahead as planned they could be winched up in just 20 minutes.
The rescue capsule is expected to rotate up to a dozen times as it rises through the 28-inch escape shaft, and to prevent nausea, the men have been given compression socks and a high-calorie liquid donated by Nasa.
Each escape capsule has been fitted with a two-way communication system and a video camera so each miner’s face can be watched by rescuers, but Mr Manalich said that the biggest concern for officials was that the men could suffer panic attacks during the ascent. “This is the first time in many weeks that the miners are going to be completely alone,” he added.
The rescue team hopes to start extracting the men on Wednesday after reinforcing the top segment of the escape shaft with steel tubing.
A video inspection showed that most of the shaft, 622 metres deep, was solid rock and did not require a lining, speeding up a complex and often fraught challenge, officials said.
During conversations with the miners last night, they were asked to help officials agree the order in which they will be hauled to the surface.
Mr Manalich said that several of the men expressed a desire to be the last man out in what he called “a completely admirable show of solidarity”.
On further questioning, however, the men revealed the cause of the disagreement: a guaranteed place in Guinness World Records for the longest time a miner has ever been trapped underground. Given the complexities of the situation, it is a record that many expect to be insurmountable.
A drill reached the trapped men on Saturday, 65 days after an accident caused the collapse of the gold and copper mine. The breakthrough triggered celebrations above and below ground.
The miners used explosives to widen the shaft for a special capsule dubbed “the phoenix”, which will lift them individually to the surface.
The government-led rescue operation has used cameras to analyse the entire length of the shaft. An eight-member team of geologists determined that the tunnel presented little risk of caving in.
All day yesterday, a caravan of trucks, vans and buses brought supplies and personnel to the already crowded mountainside. With 20 different companies participating in the rescue effort and an estimated 2,000 journalists at the scene, the problems of feeding and organising the rescuers’ village have grown.
Rescuers who descend to the mine will give the trapped men green waterproof suits designed to let their skin breathe as they ascend. – ( Guardianservice)