Drilling of shaft to start off today

Chilean rescuers will begin today the months-long task of drilling a shaft to rescue 33 miners trapped deep underground for 24 days, as officials push for an accelerated rescue plan.

President Sebastian Pinera is reportedly pressuring rescuers to get the miners out before September 18, the bicentennial anniversary of Chile’s independence from Spanish colonial rule.

“Plan B has already been designed,” Health Minister Jaime Manalich said Saturday, adding that details of the alternative plan would be released soon.

Under current plans, an Australian-made hydraulic bore will drill a hole 66 centimetres wide to pull the miners out one at a time from the hot and damp shelter where they are huddled underground.

“The shaft we’re drilling to the shelter will go down 702 metres in a straight line” to the trapped miners, the engineer in charge of the rescue operation, Andre Sougarret, said on Saturday.

Mr Sougarret said the drilling operation was expected to last three to four months, in line with previous estimates.

The hydraulic bore drills at a maximum rate of 20 metres per day. The initial narrow shaft it will dig will have to be doubled in diameter to allow a man to pass through, Mr Sougarret explained.

Officials are also considering drilling where the main entrance ramp to the San Jose gold and silver mine collapsed on August 5, though some engineers fear the site remains unstable.

A third option being tabled suggests broadening an already existing shaft some 12 centimetres in diameter, about 300 metres from the emergency shelter where the miners are confined.

According to Geotec, the company owning the drilling equipment, expanding that shaft could free the men in about 60 days, two whole months ahead of early estimates.

Geotec manager Walter Herrera said government experts were studying this proposal. But Mining Minister Laurence Golborne earlier rejected reports of a possible rescue within the next month.

“We have reviewed 10 different options,” he told Radio Cooperativa. “Up to now there is no alternative... that would allow us to get them out in 30 days.”

Mr Golborne said that while the Australian-made bore went to work, engineers would also be widening a third existing access shaft to the miners’ shelter from 10.2 centimetres to 30.5 centimetres so bigger objects can be sent down to them.

He added that on Sunday the trapped miners will be allowed to talk to one family member by telephone “for at least one minute.”

Mr Golborne said miners would also receive over the next few days audio-visual equipment including MP3 players with speakers, a small video projector with a collection of DVDs with recorded soccer games, dice and clothes.

He said special folding cots would also be lowered to the shelter to provide more comfortable sleeping arrangements for the workers. Rescuers contacted the miners through a narrow shaft a week ago and have been sending them fresh water, messages and supplies ever since.

Most were shown in good spirits in a video they sent to their families at the surface on Thursday, but a handful of them appeared to be struggling psychologically.

Yet, Mr Manalich said five depressed miners were doing much better after receiving food, vitamins and communicating with friends and relatives, who sent them a video recording earlier on Saturday.

Pope praying for ‘serenity’ of trapped workers

Pope Benedict XVI said yesterday he prayed for the “serenity” of 33 Chilean miners trapped deep underground for more than three weeks with the rescue operation set to take months.

“I would like to recall with special affection the miners who are trapped in the San Jose mine, in the Chilean region of Atacama,” the Pope said in Spanish after leading the Angelus prayer from the balcony of his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo.

“I commend to them and their families... assurances of my spiritual proximity and my continual prayers, that they maintain serenity during the wait for a happy conclusion to the work undertaken to save them,” he said.