Escape shaft nearly done
<p>A relative of one of the 33 miners trapped lights a candle during a vigil outside the San Jose mine in Copiapo, Chile, Thursday Oct. 7, 2010. The miners have been trapped deep underground in the copper and gold mine since it collapsed on Aug. 5.</p>
SAN JOSE MINE, Chile (AP) — Excitement grew Friday outside the mine where 33 men have been trapped for more than two months, as a drill carving an escape shaft pushed through the final section of rock above their underground chamber.
“Today could be a great day,” tweeted Mining Minister Laurence Golborne, quoting a song by Joan Manuel Serrat.
Health Minister Jaime Manalich, speaking briefly as he arrived at the mine, raised expectations even more by repeating “Tuesday” back to reporters who asked if the men could be pulled out that day.
The miners’ families kept vigil overnight, singing songs around a bonfire and doing early morning calisthenics to shake off anxiety and shivers in the bitter desert cold.
“Just a little bit left to go, a very little bit,” said Cristina Nunez, whose husband, Claudio Yanez, is trapped below. Still, she wants rescuers to take no chances, waiting a few days more if necessary to pull them all out safely.
The “Plan B” drill is just yards away from winning a three-way race to reach the miners with a hole wide enough to accommodate their escape capsule. “Plan A” and “Plan C” had to slow down after repeatedly veering off course in recent days.
Manalich said the drill paused Friday morning for a maintenance check before the final push. New depth figures weren’t released, but a technician working with the T130 drill told The Associated Press that just 128 feet remained before the drill breaks through to the miners at 2,047 feet below ground. The technician spoke on condition of anonymity because only top government officials and rescue coordinators are authorized to talk to the media.
The T130 is aiming at a workshop that isn’t as deep underground as the refuge where the miners happened to be eating when 700,000 tons of rock collapsed on Aug. 5 in the middle section of the gold and copper mine, which runs like a corkscrew for more than four miles below a rocky hill in Chile’s vast northern Atacama desert.
Once the drilling is complete, a video camera will be lowered through the shaft to help determine whether the miners can be pulled up through the exposed rock, or must wait as much as 10 more days for steel piping to be inserted in an operation that carries some risk of damaging the escape route.
The actual rescue is expected to take 48 hours as the miners are pulled out one by one, a made-for-TV spectacle that has drawn nearly 800 journalists to this isolated spot in the desert.
Chileans have rallied around this spare-no-expense rescue effort.