The flood level of a coal mine in northern Mexico where 10 miners have been trapped for four days is lowering and the cameras that were lowered into the shafts over the weekend showed that there are no obstacles for “subsequent maneuvers”, authorities said on Thursday. Sunday.
But it is still unknown when the divers will be able to come down to rescue them, and the families of the miners are becoming increasingly desperate because the chances of finding them alive are diminishing.
The workers were trapped Wednesday afternoon in the municipality of Sabinas, in the northern state of Coahuila, when a cave-in occurred at their mine. The men ran into an adjoining area full of water, which collapsed causing the flooding of three wells.
Of the 15 miners who were working at the time of the collapse, only five managed to get out and alert the authorities.
The adjoining wells, 60 meters deep, are connected by passageways that were flooded with 34 meters of water, and its extraction was very slow because, as Coahuila Secretary of Labor Nazira Zogbi said on Saturday, while the removed from one side was leaking from another part, which was the one they were trying to plug.
The state government said in a statement on Sunday that larger capacity pumping equipment had been installed and holes were being drilled, in one of which an additional pump had already been installed, thereby increasing the flow of water extraction. “significantly increased”. The note does not specify how many meters the level had dropped.
Families, impatient and increasingly exhausted by the lack of news from their loved ones, awaited the arrival of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Sunday, who was scheduled to visit the area in the afternoon, as announced.
They were trying to hold on to the hope that their loved ones are still alive.
“Those who managed to climb and know the terrain said that there was an air pocket in (an area called) La Campana. So, if (the water) swept them to the side of the Bell, there is hope,” said Blanca Rivera, who has two cousins in the mine, on Friday night.
Hundreds of rescuers from different entities —military, police, volunteers, academics— participate in the operation.
The miners who work in this type of shaft usually work without safety measures and without maps, and during the excavations they often run into the walls of old mines that are usually full of water, which is why these accidents are common.
Between June and July of last year there were landslides in two mines in Coahuila in which nine miners perished, but the worst accident in the recent history of Mexico was in 2006 in the Pasta de Conchos mine, where 65 miners died due to an explosion . Only two bodies were recovered and the rest are still underground.