Huge drill starts workon mine rescue bid

The men were trapped on August 5 when a landslide blocked the shaft down into the San Jose copper and gold mine in northern Chile’s Atacama Desert. Last year, three miners survived 25 days trapped in a flooded mine in southern China, and the Chileans passed that mark today.

While doubts and extreme challenges remain, experts said the rescuers have the tools to get the job done – although the government still says it will take three to four months to reach the miners.

“The drill operators have the best equipment available internationally,” said Dave Feickert, director of KiaOra, a mine safety consulting firm in New Zealand which has worked extensively with China’s government to improve dangerous mines there.

“This doesn’t mean it will be easy,” he added. “They are likely to run into some technical problems that may slow them down.”

The 31-ton drill made a shallow, preliminary test hole today in the solid rock it must bore through, the first step in the week-long digging of a “pilot hole” to guide the way for the rescue. Later the drill will be fitted with larger bits to gradually expand the hole and make it big enough for the men to be pulled out one by one.

Before rescuers dug small bore holes down to the miners’ emergency shelter, the men survived 17 days without contact with the outside world by rationing a 48-hour supply of food and digging for water in the ground.

Apart from their rescue, a union leader has expressed concern for the men’s livelihoods.

San Esteban, the company that operates the mine, has said it has no money to pay their wages and the court cases it faces. It is not even participating in the rescue. State-run mining company Codelco has taken over.

Union leader Evelyn Olmos called on the government to pay their wages starting in September, plus cover the roughly 100 other people at the mine who are now out of work and 170 more elsewhere who worked for San Esteban.