Rescue shaft reaches trapped Chilean miners

Engineers yesterday broke through to the 33 Chilean miners trapped deep underground for more than two months, completing a shaft that will be used to bring them to safety within days.

The drill crew announced the breakthrough by blasting an air horn, then jumped and embraced each other in joy. They were joined by the hundreds of relatives of the miners staying next to the mine at Camp Hope, who cheered and exchanged embraces.

The miners could be brought up in a custom-built capsule through the 622-metre-deep shaft as early as Tuesday, officials said, depending on an engineering assessment on the stability of the shaft.

The trapped miners “are very relaxed, more relaxed than the press,” said Mining Minister Laurence Golborne after the breakthrough.

He warned that there was still plenty of work to be done and “precautions to take”.

“This is overwhelming – I can only imagine what my brother must be feeling down there,” Gaston Henriquez, the brother of one of the miners, told AFP as he choked on tears.

“We are very happy, because for the past two months we have suffered enormously. We’ll now wait for them to emerge so we can hug them and bring them home,” said Wilson Avalos, who has two brothers in the mine.

The drill reached a chamber where miners were waiting, Goldborne said. Several enthusiastic people in Camp Hope ran up a hill near the mine and raised 32 Chilean flags and a Bolivian flag, representing the nationality of the trapped miners.

The miners have been trapped deep underground in the northern Chile copper and gold mine since August 5, surviving longer than anyone has before under similar circumstances. Engineers said they drilled through the last four metres of rock with special care to avoid tunnel collapses.

Golborne said it will take at least six hours for crews to take all the drilling equipment out of the bore hole.

Engineers will then lower cameras to analyse the stability of the shaft, and decide if all or part of the shaft walls by inserting giant tubes.

One top government official suggested the first miners could be pulled up to the surface early this week.

“Tuesday, Tuesday,” Health Minister Jaime Manalich told reporters outside the San Jose Mine last Friday when asked when the operation could begin ahead of the shaft reaching the miners.

A senior engineer also said that, in what could be a risky operation, the miners would have to set off explosives to enlarge the chamber to make room for the four-metre-long rescue capsule.

“It’s an explosion and that means taking precautions. We have to clear the area so that the shock wave doesn’t reach anyone,” said Andre Sougarret, the engineer in charge.

Journalists and camera crews from around the world have converged on the mine, hoping to capture the first images of the miners emerging. More than 1,000 reporters were expected by the weekend.

“God be willing, in a few days the whole country will be weeping with joy... when we see these miners emerge from the depths of the mountain to embrace their wives, children, mothers and fathers,” said President Sebastian Pinera.

For days after part of the mine collapsed and trapped the miners, engineers were convinced that they had all died.

Then after two weeks of silence came an extraordinary note, penned in capital letters and written with red ink, that gave Chile the miraculous news that the miners were still alive.

“All 33 of us are well inside the shelter,” said the note written by the oldest miner, 63-year-old Mario Gomez, and attached to a drill bit which breached their shelter on August 22.

A costly million-dollar rescue operation swung into place, including engineers and mining experts but also medics and psychiatrists whose job was to help the men cope with their enforced confinement.

Cameras lowered through small bore holes revealed pictures of the men, lit mainly by the lamps on their hard-hats, grimy and dusty and often bare-chested because of the stifling heat.

Most of the men are between the ages of 40 and 63, but eight are in their twenties, and 19-year-old Jimmy Sandez has not even graduated from high school.

Yesterday marked the 66th day of their confinement.

The miners “have shown signs of anxiety as was to be expected. Others have had higher than desirable increases in blood pressure,” said Manalich, the health minister.

Rescuers will use an Austrian-made hoisting system of pulleys and cranes to lower the rescue cage down the shaft and slowly extract the miners.

Engineers say each agonisingly slow trip could take up to 1.5 hours, meaning the entire rescue could last up to two days.