10 trapped Mexican miners presumed dead after a month as officials announce recovery mission
The month-long effort to rescue 10 trapped miners in northern Mexico transitioned this week to a recovery mission as Mexican officials announced an operation to recover the bodies that could take nearly a year to complete.
Workers were inside a coal mine in the municipality of Sabinas, Coahuila, 70 miles from Eagle Pass on the Texas-Mexico border, when it caved in and trapped them on Aug. 3. Five miners managed to escape.
The Mexican government launched a rescue effort that included an aquatic drone and several pumps working to clear the flooded shafts. But authorities failed to make contact with the trapped miners.
Mexico’s Federal Electricity Commission, one of the agencies put in charge of the rescue mission by Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, announced Monday a six-stage plan estimated to take 11 months to recover the bodies of the miners.
The agency said in a statement it would dig a massive pit more than 1400 feet long – about the length of five football fields – and roughly 1,000 feet wide. Workers plan to dig nearly 200 feet deep, excavating more than 197,000,000 cubic feet of material. Any coal extracted during the operation would not be used commercially, according to the statement.
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Mexican TV news outlets captured video of family members as they held a mass Saturday near the mine to honor the miners. Dressed in white t-shirts pressed with their loved ones’ portraits, family members said their final goodbyes at the site of the collapsed mine as a Mariachi band played in the background.
“I’m devastated to go and leave him here, because I never left him alone. I supported him in everything,” Martha Huerta, wife of one of the miners, told Imagen Noticias.
The director of the Federal Electricity Commission, Manuel Bartlett, promised at a press conference Monday to create a secure space on the site for the miners’ wives to be present at every stage of the recovery.
Mexico's attorney general's office announced it had obtained arrest warrants for three people it suspects were responsible for exploitative practices in violation of the law at the mine, known as “El Pinabete.”
Mines in Coahuila have claimed many lives over the years. Last year, nine miners died in mine collapses.
The deadliest mining accident in the country’s history came in Coahuila in 2006 when an explosion rocked the Pasta de Conchos mine where 73 miners were working– 65 died inside the mine and only two bodies were ever recovered. A group has put pressure on several Mexican presidential administrations to carry out a recovery of the bodies to little avail.
Contributing: The Associated Press