The President of Mexico Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador asked, on Sunday August 7, for relief to make ” more “ to rescue the ten miners trapped underground since Wednesday in northeastern Mexico following the collapse and flooding of three coal shafts.
“We must continue to work to save the miners. We need to keep doing what we are doing and more.”said the president during a visit to the scene of the accident in Agujita in the locality of Las Sabinas, in the state of Coahuila. “I want it to be as soon as possible”he added to reporters.
Experts fear new infiltrations
Nearly 400 rescuers are mobilized to try to save the ten miners stuck 60 meters deep, half of which was flooded. The president had spoken on Saturday of a day “decisive” for rescue operations: “We will know if there is the possibility that divers can enter [dans la mine] without risk “.
The divers, however, were unable to enter on Saturday because the water level (34 meters flood) had only dropped by 9.5 meters.
divers “said they didn’t know when” they could go down, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on the spot Alicia Huerta, sister-in-law of one of the ten miners underground.
The emergency services use about twenty pumps. However, experts fear new infiltration from a neighboring mine.
Saturday evening, relatives participated in a mass near the improvised camp where they have been meeting since Wednesday, away from the relief area cordoned off by the authorities.
Recurring incidents
Sole producer of Mexican coal, the state of Coahuila is used to mining tragedies. In June 2021, seven workers died after an underground collapse. On February 19, 2006, 65 miners died when an underground gas pocket exploded at Pasta de Conchos, a mine controlled by conglomerate Grupo México. Sixteen years later, 63 of the 65 bodies are still lying at the bottom of the mine.
It has been sixteen years since families “require action” against accidents “and their calls were not heard”deplored the Society of Jesus, which affirms that the Jesuits accompany the relatives in their demand for justice before international bodies.
In October 2010 in Chile, 33 workers were able to get out of a copper mine, almost 700 meters deep, in the Atacama desert after 69 days underground and a landslide.