An Australian-made hydraulic bore was being assembled yesterday for the months-long drilling of a shaft big enough to rescue 33 trapped miners, some of whom were showing signs of depression.
“We’ve finished building the machine’s platform ... we hope between Sunday and Monday to begin drilling the shaft,” the operation’s chief engineer, Andre Sougarret, told reporters.
The bore, an Australian-made Strata 950, drills at a maximum rate of 20m per day. The initial narrow shaft it will dig will have to be doubled in diameter to permit a man to pass through, he explained.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Once it is fully assembled and operational, engineers said it will take up to four months of painstaking drilling to reach the trapped miners, 700m down the gold and silver mine that collapsed on Aug. 5.
Most of the miners were in good spirits in a 45-minute video they sent to their families at the surface after their three-week ordeal, but a handful of them appeared to be struggling psychologically, officials said on Friday.
“Five of the miners are isolated, are not eating well and do not want to appear on camera,” Chilean Health Minister Jaime Manalich said. “This is what we call depression.”
The minister said a psychiatrist would attempt to treat the men over an intercom system dropped to them.
The mental malaise emerging among the miners holed up in a hot and cramped shelter they themselves have described as “hell” augured badly for the months of continued captivity the men have yet to endure.
During that time, the men will receive water, sustenance, medical care and communication through a tiny drill probe hole that located them last Sunday.
The video footage shot by the miners and broadcast in Chile late on Thursday showed most of the group were coping with their confinement.
“We’ve organized everything really well down here,” one of the miners, sporting a scraggly beard and pointing to a corner reserved for medical supplies, said in excerpts of the video.
“This is where we entertain ourselves, where we have a meeting every day, where we make plans. This is where we pray,” he said.
About a dozen other miners waved at the mini-camera, which was delivered via one of the metal capsules dropped to them regularly.
Chilean authorities have already taken steps to boost the men’s mental resilience for the ordeal that still lays ahead, notably by reaching out to organizations and individuals with experience in prolonged isolation.
Four officials from the US space agency NASA were due to arrive today or tomorrow in Chile to provide expertise, while submarine commanders in Chile’s navy have already given advice.
At least five people from a group of 16 who survived 72 days in the Andes after a 1972 airplane crash by cannibalizing dead passengers were also to head from Uruguay to the scene of the mine rescue drama next week.
“When they get out and they hug each other above ground, they’ll see how little two or three months is in a lifetime,” said one of the crash survivors, Jose Luis Inciarte, 62.
As rescue operations and psychological assistance ramped up, so did legal actions against the owners of the mine where the men are trapped.
San Esteban Mining, the company responsible for the gold and copper mine in northern Chile, was ordered on Thursday by a local judge to freeze US$1.8 million in revenue so that it can pay future compensation to 26 of the families of those trapped.
One family has also filed a lawsuit over the accident, accusing the mine company and government inspectors of criminal negligence by allowing the facility to reopen in 2008 after a worker accident led to its closure in 2007.
Chile’s mining minister announced late on Friday he will revise mine safety regulations and more than double the budget and staff monitoring the sector in the wake of the Aug. 5 accident.
“We can’t guarantee there will be no more accidents, but we can make company leaders more aware of the importance of worker safety,” Laurence Golborne told reporters.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not