Time running out for trapped Chilean miners

Chilean Copper Giant Codelco aims to reach five trapped workers in the flagship El Teniente mine in the next 12 hours and after a collapse that kills a person.

On Thursday, a 4.2 -magnitude tremor shook the new Andesita unit of the large mine, the world’s largest underground copper deposit, and the workers were trapped for 18 hours without any contact with the teams outside.

The incident triggered the aftershocks that made it impossible for the rescuers to reach the region where the workers fell into the trap.

“Tunnels are closed, collapsed. There is not even radio communication.” He said.

Codelco said that he expects the aftershocks to reduce the shocks in the next 12 hours and allowed the miner to send the equipment that was employed remotely to robots or drones to help workers clean the materials that block tunnels.

Codelco is investigating whether the incident is caused by natural reasons or mining activities in the earthquake -prone country.

“The event we recorded yesterday is one of the biggest events that El Teniente Maden has experienced in decades – although not the biggest.”

The music said that about 100 people are in place to help recover and that the next 48 hours would be critical. He said neither the explosives nor the drilling was not the accident.

Music did not deal with how the incident would affect Codelco’s production in the production area of El Teneiente. Codelco will report its financial results in the first half of the year on Friday, as previously planned.

Andesita is one of the newest projects in Codelco’s flagship El Teniente complex and would start production in the second quarter of this year. Opened in 1905, El Teniente produced 356,000 metric tons of copper last year. The complex includes more than 4,500 tunnel and underground gallery in the Andes Mountains, about 75 kilometers southeast of Santiago, the capital of Chile.

Codelco, in addition to a worker who died in collapse, nine people were injured, he said.