Chile mine rescue efforts speed up

Federico Quilodran

The Associated Press

COPIAPO, Chile – Each of the 33 miners trapped a half­mile underground lived on two spoonfuls of tuna, a sip of milk, a bite of crackers and a morsel of peaches. Every other day.

They were so careful in eat­ing what was supposed to be a two-day emergency supply that when the outside world finally reached them 17 days after a mine collapse, they still had some food left.

The discipline the men have already shown will be essential during the four months it may take rescuers to dig a hole wide enough to get them out of their shelter. The first communica­tions with the trapped miners, now able to talk through a fixed line with their rescuers above – show how determined they have been to stay alive.

“We heard them with such strength, such spirit, which is a reflection of what for them has been a gigantic fortitude and a very well organized effort,” Mining Minister Laurence Gol­borne said Tuesday after talking with the miners at length the night before through an inter­com system lowered into their underground refuge. “The way that they have rationed the food, just as they’ve performed throughout this crisis, is an example for all of us.”

The miners were plunged into darkness by the Aug. 5 collapse of the main shaft of a gold and silver mine that runs like a corkscrew for more than four miles under a barren mountain in northern Chile’s Atacama desert. They gained contact with the outside world Sunday when rescuers drilled a narrow bore-hole down to their living-room-sized shelter after seven failed attempts.

“It’s been like a heart that’s breaking, but we’re thankful they’re all alive,” bore-hole driller Rodrigo Carreno told The Associated Press as he prepared to leave Tuesday. “We did every­thing we could to save them, and in the end we succeeded.”

The miners said they have honored the same hierarchy they used on any work shift, fol­lowing the directions of 54­year-old shift foreman Luis Urzua.

They conserved the use of their helmet lamps, their only source of light other than a handful of vehicles whose engines contaminate the air supply. They fired up a bull­dozer to carve into a natural water deposit, but otherwise minimized using the vehicles that would contaminate the available air.

The miners can still reach many chambers and access ramps in the lower reaches of the mine, and have used a sep­arate area some distance from their reinforced emergency refuge as their bathroom. But they have mostly stayed in the refuge, where they knew res­cuers would try to reach them. The room has become sti­flingly hot and stuffy. Leaving it allows them to breathe better air, but wandering too far is risky in the unstable mine, which has suffered several rock collapses since the initial acci­dent.

Rescue efforts advanced con­siderably Tuesday as a third bore-hole prepared to break through to the miners, and a huge machine arrived from central Chile to carve out a tun­nel just wide enough for the miners to be pulled out one-by­one. That machine won’t begin drilling for several days.

Andres Sougarret, the rescue effort’s leader, estimated that it would take three to four months to pull the men out. But Davitt McAteer, a former assis­tant secretary of the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administra­tion, called that “perhaps the most conservative model.”

“Twenty-five hundred feet is not a terribly, terribly big hole to drill,” McAteer said. “We ought to be able to get them out in a period of weeks, not months.”

Meanwhile, three 6-inch­wide shafts will serve as the miners’ “umbilical cords” – one for supplies, another for communications and a third to guarantee their air supply.

A steady flow of emergency supplies was sent down to the miners on Tuesday in a rocket­shaped metal tube called a “paloma,” Spanish for dove. The paloma is 5¼ feet long and takes a full hour to descend through the bore-hole.

The supplies included 33 small low-intensity and low­energy LED lights, so that each miner can have a light source that won’t bother his eyes in the otherwise murky depths of the mine.

Also sent down Tuesday was “more nutritive food” in the form of a vitamin-enriched gel, along with eye patches, aspirin and medicine for one miner who has diabetes and another who suffers from the respira­tory disease silicosis, Health Minister Jaime Manalich said Tuesday.

Family members who have maintained an anxious vigil outside the mine were encour­aged First was Lila Ramirez, answering the “Dear Lila” let­ter from her husband, Mario Gomez, that thrilled the nation when President Sebast­ian Pinera read it aloud, pro­viding the first details of the miners’ survival.

With each passing day, the families have been praying for their trapped husbands, fathers, brothers and boyfriends in tents surround­ing the mine entrance, where cold nights end in a chilly fog. There’s a bonfire to keep warm, and barbecue and other food donated by the local gov­ernment in a common tent.

“We’re not going to abandon this camp until we go out with the last miner left,” said Maria Segovia. “There are 33 of them, and one is my brother.”

Before the miners were dis­covered alive on Sunday, many Chileans were beginning to assume the worst.

The stunning news of their survival prompted euphoria and pride across a country still recovering from one of the world’s most powerful earth­quakes.