Mexican rescuers race against the clock to free trapped miners

Rescuers continued this Thursday the arduous and hurried efforts to free ten miners who have been trapped since Wednesdayafter a collapse in a coal deposit in the town of Sabinas, in northeastern Mexico.

The works advance in the midst of the anguish of relatives who wait in the vicinity of the sinkhole, 60 meters deep, which suddenly collapsed when it was flooded by three wells connecteds with the gallery.

“Here time is very important, so we are very focused (…) to be able to rescue the miners as soon as possible,” Laura Velázquez, national coordinator of Civil Protection, said Thursday during the daily conference of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

“What I want with all my soul is that we rescue the miners,” the president said in turn. “You must not lose faith, we must not lose hope,” he added, addressing the families of the workers.

A total of 234 rescuers from the Army and other government entities were sent to the scene of the incident, about 1,130 km north of Mexico City, in the so-called coal region of the state of Coahuila, the Secretary of Defense reported Thursday.

After the collapse, five miners “managed to get out” and they were taken to a hospital, of which two were discharged, Velázquez said.

At least five extraction pumps are working on the site, but the president called on the National Water Commission to deploy more equipment.

Water pumps are needed “that we can carry on planes cargo from the Air Force or by land to seize the day,” urged the president.

The flood “generated the softening of the walls inside, causing the workers to be trapped,” explained the Secretary of Security.

“For to get to the mines you have to go down three wells, It is complicated but we have been achieving it. The pumps are being placed to extract” the water, Velázquez added.

– Distress –

In the placesome relatives could not hide their pessimism. “Unfortunately, there is not much hope,” José Luis Amaya, a cousin of one of the miners, told Milenio television on Wednesday night.

Other relatives staged dramatic scenes around the mine, which was cordoned off by the National Guard.

The mother of one of the workers wept disconsolately before the cameras, unable to answer questions from the press, while another unidentified woman stated that two of her children work there, although one of them had managed to get out.

In June 2021, seven miners died after the collapse of another coal mine in the Múzquiz region, also in Coahuila, the main producer of said mineral in Mexico.

The most serious mining accident in this region, bordering the United States, occurred on February 19, 2006when a gas explosion at the Pasta de Conchos mine, controlled by the conglomerate Grupo México, caused the death of 65 workers.

Only two bodies were rescued after that tragedy.