Relatives of miners, trapped in a deep underground copper and gold mine, hold up Chilean flags as they sing the national anthem outside the mine in Copiapo, 725 km north of Santiago, August 22, 2010. - Photo by Reuters.
SANTIAGO: Chile rejoiced Sunday at word that 33 miners trapped deep below ground for more than two weeks were alive and apparently in good condition, but engineers warned that rescuing them could yet take months.
The miners were able to send up a note through a
shaft drilled 700 meters (2,300 feet) into the earth to alert engineers and family members above ground that they were together and alive inside an emergency shelter.
“All 33 of us are well inside the shelter,” said the note, written in bold red capital letters.
President Sebastian Pinera read the message aloud and waved it in the air, as friends and relatives wept with joy outside the northern Chilean mine whose entrance collapsed on August 5, trapping the workers inside.
His words were met by a roar of cheers after days of fading hopes outside the San Jose gold and copper mine near the city of Copiapo, 800 kilometers (500 miles) north of Santiago.
A remotely operated camera lowered down the bore hole later showed the miners sweaty and shirtless in the hot (32-36 degrees Celsius, 90-97 Fahrenheit) shelter, but in apparently good condition and high spirits.
“Many of them approached the camera and put their faces right up against it, like children, and we could see happiness and hope in their eyes,” Pinera said, adding that the images “gave me a lot of happiness and faith that this is going to end well.” National Emergency Office regional director Carlos Garcia said the trapped miners had some water and lights and that in the next few hours they would get fresh supplies of food and water, which they would have to ration out carefully.
Garcia said relatives would be soon allowed to speak with their loved ones through a cable dropped down the drill bore.
As word spread that the miners were alive after 17 days below ground, drivers honked their horns in the capital Santiago and thousands of people gathered in other cities to celebrate and wave national flags.
Until Sunday, there had been no sign that the miners had survived their ordeal.
But then came two notes in a plastic bag attached to a line that had been lowered through the narrow shaft drilled into emergency shelter.
Mining Minister Laurence Golborne said the first note they pulled out was a letter from Mario Gomez, one of the trapped miners, to his wife Liliana.
“We celebrated without knowing anything more than that,” Golborne said.
“But then came that message that says the 33 are alive.” In his letter to his wife, Gomez, 63, said: “I hope to get out soon. Have patience and faith. I haven't stopped thinking about all of you for a single moment. I love you all.” One of the most experienced miners inside the shelter, Gomez said “a little water” was trickling down into the shelter and that for days the drilling machines could be heard clearly from above.
“I'm sure we'll get out of here alive. I hope to talk to you later,” he wrote.
“I knew my husband was strong,” his wife told reporters after reading his letter.
Despite the dramatic breakthrough, the chief engineer in charge of the rescue operation, Andres Sougarret, said it would take at least four months to drill a shaft large enough to bring out the trapped miners.
“A shaft 66 centimeters (26 inches) in diameter (will take) at least 120 days” to complete, the engineer said.
Reaching the miners with the small-bore shaft through which their note was relayed took several hit-and-miss attempts, and rescuers had almost lost all hope of finding the men alive, Sougarret added.
Rescuers said the miners would have to assist in their own release by clearing debris away from the hole beneath ground as drillers worked from above.
Rescue worker Pedro Ramirez told TVN television drilling the new shaft would begin on Monday, adding that the miners would be pulled out “one by one” from the bottom of the mine once it was completed.
During the past two weeks, some 500 people clambered to the mine on top of a mountain in Chile's Atacama desert to pray for the trapped men. Messages of hope were written with piles of stones around the entrance to the mine.
Friends and family at the site celebrated the good news by cheering and waving a Chilean flag that had been found among the debris left by the earthquake and tsunami that devastated central Chile on February 27.
“They'll come out thin and dirty, but whole and strong, because the miners have shown they have courage and mettle, which is what has kept them together,” Pinera said, choking with emotion. – AFP
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