We’re alive! TV images of Chilean miners 18 DAYS after being trapped… but it could be Christmas before they are rescued
* Miners’ message from 2,300ft below: ‘All 33 of us are fine in the shelter’
* It will take months to get them out, say experts
* Men are in a mine shaft shelter the size of a small apartment
A team of 33 miners trapped underground have been told it could be Christmas before they are rescued.
The men have been found alive after 17 days without contact but will have to wait months until a big enough shaft can be dug to pull them out.
Experts fear the group could become insane before then because they are holed up in an area no larger than a one-bedroom flat. The men had travelled 4.5 miles into the winding shafts of the San Jose copper and gold mine in Chile when they were trapped by a cave-in on August 5.
Rescuers tried and failed to reach them, but worked out they were 2,300ft below ground in an emergency refuge.
Seven narrow boreholes were drilled vertically down from the surface in an attempt to break through to them, all to no avail.
Finally, after weeks of mistakes and new cave-ins – and when families and friends had almost given them up for dead – the eighth attempt succeeded on Sunday.
The men quickly tied two notes to the end of a probe that rescuers pulled up, announcing in big red letters: ‘All 33 of us are fine in the shelter.’
A video camera sent down showed some of the miners waving happily and President Sebastian Pinera said: ‘Today all of Chile is crying with excitement and joy.’
Anxiety remains, however. Small capsules of food, water and supplies of oxygen can be passed down the 6in-wide borehole – but it could take four months to drill a 26inwide shaft big enough for the men to be brought out one by one, because the equipment used works very slowly.
The first capsules – which take about an hour to descend from the surface – will include water and food in the form of a high-energy glucose gel to miners who have almost certainly lost significant weight since they were trapped with limited food supplies.
The miners’ survival after 17 days is very unusual, but since they have made it this far, they should emerge physically fine, said Davitt McAteer, a former U.S. mine safety minister.
It is their mental state that will be a cause for concern.
‘The health risks in a copper and gold mine are pretty small if you have air, food and water,’ he said. ‘But the stress of being trapped underground for a long period of time can be significant.’
A team of doctors and psychiatrists arrived last night to maintain the miners’ sanity.
The men have already been trapped underground longer than all but a few miners rescued in recent history.
All 33 miners at San Jose are crammed into a space the size of a flat and it is so hot underground that they are stripped to the waist. It was unclear last night how they had survived. Rations in the refuge were thought to be enough for only 48 hours.
The miners seemed to be aware that their rescue may take a long time. One of them, Mario Gomez, 63, wrote a note to his wife Liliana, saying: ‘Even if we have to wait months to communicate … I want to tell everyone that I’m good and we’ll surely come out OK. Patience and faith.’
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