Chile Turns to Retrieving Trapped Miners Found Alive Sunday
Chile Turns to Retrieving Trapped Miners Found Alive Sunday
Chile completed a conduit to send food and drink to 33 miners who have been trapped 700 meters (2,300 feet) underground for more than two weeks, said the leader of rescue operations Andre Sougarret.
“We have secured an umbilical cord,” Sougarret said in remarks broadcast by television channel TVN. “Now we will begin the task of delivering food and communication with the workers.”
State-owned Codelco, the world’s largest copper producer, is sending a drill capable of cutting a hole large enough for the miners to escape from the subterranean refuge in which they took shelter. Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter said the government and mining experts will discuss how to speed up the rescue, which may take three or four months.
Aid workers were preparing to send canisters of liquid nutrients to the trapped men, Sougarret said.
Black and white images of some of the men were shown on television news programs last night after rescuers made the first contact with them since an Aug. 5 tunnel collapse at the San Jose copper and gold mine in Chile’s northern Atacama region.
“The whole of Chile is crying with joy and emotion,” Chile’s President Sebastian Pinera said in televised remarks while holding up a letter from the miners yesterday. “This tells us they are alive, united and waiting to return to the sunlight and their families’ arms.”
Mining Supervision
Pinera said he will overhaul mining supervision in Chile, the world’s largest copper producer, after firing the head of the mining regulator on Aug. 11 over the accident. The reform may make it tougher for small-scale underground mines to continue operating, Gustavo Lagos, a professor at the Catholic University’s mining school in Santiago, said in a telephone interview.
Pinera said in a speech at the presidential palace today that he has given a new labor committee three months to recommend an overhaul of Chile’s workforce safety regulations, institutions and practices.
Rescue efforts are being led by mining experts from Codelco.
Melbourne-based BHP Billiton Ltd., which operates the largest copper mine in the world also in the Atacama Desert, is participating in the rescue effort.
Most of Chile’s copper production comes from larger operators such as Codelco, BHP and Phoenix-based Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. Small and medium mines make up less than 5 percent of Chile’s copper output which exceeds 5 million metric tons a year, Lagos said.
Earthquake
The accident, which has filled newspaper headlines and dominated television news programs in Chile since Aug. 6, comes four months after the country was hit by a magnitude 8.8 earthquake that killed about 500 people and caused an estimated $30 billion in damages and losses.
Pinera dismissed Alejandro Vio, director of Chile’s geological and mining service known as Sernageomin, after the agency allowed the San Jose mine to reopen after being shut down by Vio’s predecessor in 2007.
Authorities will carry out a “profound restructuring” of Sernageomin to improve mining safety in Chile and will punish anyone found responsible for the San Jose collapse, Pinera said Aug. 11.
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