RESCUE WORKERS have finished shoring up the initial section of an escape tunnel to rescue the 33 trapped miners and begun dry runs ahead of the launch of the operation after midnight tonight.
Engineers sent a “Phoenix” – one of three high-tech capsules specially designed for the rescue – to a depth of 610m, 12m short of the bottom of the tunnel. “We didn’t send it down the last 10 metres – we couldn’t risk someone jumping in,” joked Laurence Golborne, the mining minister.
If the Phoenix runs into problems, the lower section can be released and the miner would travel gently back down. But Mr Golborne no hitches were encountered during the filmed tests.
The rescue will start “at zero hours on Wednesday”, Mr Golborne said, though he acknowledged that, if the cement around the winch system had dried properly, the 48-hour operation could start earlier.
Four rescue workers will descend into the mine where the 32 Chileans and one Bolivian have been stuck since a cave-in on August 5th. After taking down the first rescuer, the Phoenix will ride back up with the first miner inside.
Though several men have volunteered to go last, it seems the men are a bit more nervous of being the first to step into the cage.
Officials say the first to be rescued will be young, able miners to ensure they can operate the Phoenix in case of problems.
The men will switch to a high-protein liquid diet supplemented with magnesium and other minerals three hours before the rescue to reduce the risk of them vomiting or fainting during the 15-minute trip. Once out, they will be assessed by doctors and reunited with their families before going to hospital by helicopter.
The 33 miners knew they were dicing with death in a mine plagued by accidents. Some had been planning to quit, relatives said yesterday, but desperation drove them on.
“The mine was weeping a lot,” said María Segovia, whose brother Darío is among the group, using the miners’ expression for falling rocks and the sounds of creaking that they knew warned of trouble.
The century-old mine, located off a dirt track in the bare hills of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, was worked the old-fashioned way. Miners blasted chunks of gold-laden rock with explosives, collected the rubble in trucks and sent it up to the surface to be processed at a plant in nearby Copiapó.
The method is controversial. Bélgica Ramírez, whose brother-in-law, Marío Gómez – at 63, the oldest of the trapped miners – also has a son-in-law, Iván Toro, who lost a leg when rock collapsed at the San José mine in 2001.
“The mine was in precarious condition and they always told the bosses, but the only thing they cared about was production,” said Ms Ramírez. The mine owners have apologised for the accident, but said the decision to reopen the mine in May 2008 after a worker died in an accident in 2007 was taken after safety checks.
Darío Segovia had only been working at San José for three months before the accident. He had taken the job because he had been unemployed and has three children, but had been planning to look for something else. “He earned 450,000 pesos (€670) a month. This wasn’t his shift – he was doing overtime to earn a bit extra,” his sister said.
Relatives said the miners knew the risks and got paid slightly better than in some other local mines because of them. Nevertheless, Carlos Barrios, one of the miners, “was afraid. He had a premonition there would be a collapse. There were rocks falling every day,” said one of his relatives who asked not to be named.
Sebastián Piñera, the president, has fined mine safety regulators in the wake of the accident. Reducing the 15.1 per cent poverty rate in a country hailed as Latin America’s best-managed economy and a prime investment destination is one of Mr Piñera’s most urgent challenges.– (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010)