Fatal Accident Hits Codelco’s Top Copper Mine in Chile

(Bloomberg) – Codelco, the world’s number 1 copper manufacturer, escapes from a fatal accident and said that the tremor of a soil caused collapse in a new part of the biggest mine and that five people are stuck underground.

It was confirmed that a person was dead and nine injured. The other five are the subjects of a rescue effort to compare with the salvation of 33 trapped miners in Chile ten years ago. The government said on Friday, Chairman of the Executive Officer, Ruben Alvarado, said that he was in coordination of coordination on the field and that he would join the mining Minister of Mining Aurora Williams.

The accident occurred in a section that began to produce copper called Andesita in the coming years in the El Teniente Department in the afternoon. Activities in the region were stopped and hundreds of evacuation. The mines in Chile are designed to withstand a much stronger seismic activity than the 4.2 magnitude activity recorded on Thursday. An investigation continues.

The deadly collapse is the last mishap for Codelco, who struggles to get rid of years of decline in output. Behemoth, controlled by the state, is trying to complete a few late and over -budget projects to overhaul aging operations and maintain its status as the world’s largest copper supplier.

Juan Ignacio Guzmán, who runs Gem, a mineral consulting company in Chile, said, “The most important impact will be the delay in the increase in the Andesita project in which the accident occurs, because the production from this sector is low, but its participation is more important in the coming years.” He said.

Codelco canceled a presentation of the first half of the scheduled for Friday morning, as CEO Alvarado focused on the events in El Teniente.

Andre Sucarret, Alvarado’s predecessor in Codelco, was the engineer who pioneered the rescue of miners stuck in the San Jose mine in North Chile in 2010.

Paulo Marín, the employee of the contractor Salfa Montaijes, died in the collapse in El Teniente. Nine people were not injured yet, none of them threatened life. Previously, the newspaper El Mercurio, five workers who fell into the trapped reported. This was not confirmed by Codelco, who deals with his efforts as a rescue.

The company knows its definite position in the statement that the company did not contact the workers who have fallen into the trap, but the President of the Division and the President of the Division to journalists on Friday. Music, the next 48 hours, some of the 100 people who participated in releasing 33 miners in 2010 is very important for a rescue effort, he said.

Codelco has made its mines much safer as a part of the sector -wide security pressure in recent years, while accidents continue to affect project development and operations.

Last year, CODELCO’s Radomiro Tom Open Pit was a deadly scene of a deadly accident that led to production cuts, died in an accident while a worker in the Ventanas section repaired a warehouse roof. In 2023, an electrical technician in El Teniente died.

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