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3rd drill to the rescue for Chile's trapped miners
Source: Agencies |
September 11, 2010, Saturday
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Online Edition
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Chile is sparing no expense to rescue its 33 trapped miners, mounting three separate drilling efforts to carve escape tunnels through nearly a half-mile of solid rock and collapsed mine shafts. The latest - an oil-well drill so big it takes 40 trucks to carry it - began arriving yesterday.
The drill will be nearly 45 meters tall when assembled at the gold and copper mine where the main shaft collapsed August 5. Its huge size has required rescuers to level rocks and lay a concrete platform over an area nearly the size of a football field on the hilltop, where only a dozen trucks at a time have room to unload their cargo.
Relatives of the miners - now stuck underground for 36 days - applauded the caravan's arrival, waving Chilean flags as the trucks rolled past their tents, known as "Camp Hope." The government also has established a 24/7 presence at the mine, providing families with food, shelter and support in the hot days and frigid nights of their Atacama desert vigil.
The oil drill is the government's Plan C, joining two mining-industry drills that have been carving other escape holes since last week. Just building its platform is taking two weeks.
Used by the country's state oil company in northern Chile, it drills the fastest of the three, and is capable of reaching the miners in 45 days after it becomes operational. But its power also increases the risk of rockfalls, so rescuers plan to aim it for the very bottom of the mine, some distance away from the other two efforts, which are aimed closer to the miners' refuge.
Meanwhile, Plan B suffered setbacks when the second drill struck an iron support beam for a mine shaft at 268 meters, destroying a drill bit. Engineers have had to lower magnets down the shaft to recover the broken metal, said a government official who insisting on speaking anonymously because she was not authorized to talk with the news media.
A replacement drill part was rushed from the United States.
The drill will be nearly 45 meters tall when assembled at the gold and copper mine where the main shaft collapsed August 5. Its huge size has required rescuers to level rocks and lay a concrete platform over an area nearly the size of a football field on the hilltop, where only a dozen trucks at a time have room to unload their cargo.
Relatives of the miners - now stuck underground for 36 days - applauded the caravan's arrival, waving Chilean flags as the trucks rolled past their tents, known as "Camp Hope." The government also has established a 24/7 presence at the mine, providing families with food, shelter and support in the hot days and frigid nights of their Atacama desert vigil.
The oil drill is the government's Plan C, joining two mining-industry drills that have been carving other escape holes since last week. Just building its platform is taking two weeks.
Used by the country's state oil company in northern Chile, it drills the fastest of the three, and is capable of reaching the miners in 45 days after it becomes operational. But its power also increases the risk of rockfalls, so rescuers plan to aim it for the very bottom of the mine, some distance away from the other two efforts, which are aimed closer to the miners' refuge.
Meanwhile, Plan B suffered setbacks when the second drill struck an iron support beam for a mine shaft at 268 meters, destroying a drill bit. Engineers have had to lower magnets down the shaft to recover the broken metal, said a government official who insisting on speaking anonymously because she was not authorized to talk with the news media.
A replacement drill part was rushed from the United States.
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