Codelco suspends El Teniente contractors through Aug. 13 as it seeks restart

Santiago (Reuters) -Chile’s Codelco suspended contracts with third -party workers on August 13th, as he sought approval to reopen the ten episodes of the mine after a collapse last week.

Six people died on July 31 without a great tremor, which led to the tunnels to surround the new Andesita section of the wide mine.

Codelco said in a statement that the suspended employment contracts were applied directly to all relevant companies in the incident and sent more information to the mining regulator Selnageomin in order to reopen the ten “work area” of the mine. Did not specify which areas.

O’higgins region prosecutor Aquiles Cubillos, the company initially predicted more than 700 meters, collapse of 3,700 meters (3.7 km), he said. He did not specify the seriousness of the damage, but he said that Andesita affected two or three areas and five or six areas of the Norte unit.

The depths of El Teniente, Andes Mountains have about 4,500 kilometers of tunnels.

On Friday, Cubillos’ team said that the injuries and deaths occurred and the four -damaged level of the mine, which did not involve the codelco technical experts, has reviewed the four damaged levels.

Inspectors are then documenting places with photographs so that they can bring together a complete map of the damage.

(Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon and Fabian Cambero; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Diane Craft)