SAN JOSE MINE, Chile, Oct 8, 2010 (AFP) - After a record two months of being trapped underground in a collapsed Chile mine, on Friday 33 miners appeared just days away from a miraculous rescue with a deep drill shaft set to reach them within hours.
Initially they were thought to have all perished. Then after two weeks of silence came an extraordinary note, penned in capitals and written with red ink, that gave Chile the miraculous news that the miners were still alive.
Government ministers said the shaft could break through to the men within the next 24 hours, with one raising hopes that the first miners could be pulled up to the surface by early next week.
“Tuesday, Tuesday,” Health Minister Jaime Manalich told reporters outside the remote San Jose Mine in northern Chile after being asked when the operation to bring the men to the top could begin.
The shaft would break through to the miners “within 24 hours overnight or around dawn on Saturday, we cannot be certain about the exact timing,” Mines Minister Laurence Golborne said later.
He cautioned though that depending on how engineers decided to shore up the shaft it would still take “three to eight days” before they could start bringing the miners to the surface.
And a senior engineer said that, in what could be a risky operation, the miners would have to set off explosives to widen the bottom of the mine so the rescue cage will fit.
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| Chile mine rescue operation close to breakthrough. |
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