AFP :
Rescue teams in Chile searched Friday for five miners trapped after a partial collapse triggered by a tremor killed one colleague and halted operations at the world’s largest underground copper mine.
At least 100 people were involved in the perilous search effort nearly 12 hours after the event was registered, said Andres Music, general manager of El Teniente mine in Rancagua, some 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of Santiago.
“So far, we have not been able to communicate with them. The tunnels are closed, they are collapsed,” he told reporters on Friday.
The miners had been working at a depth of more than 900 meters when the collapse happened. Their exact location has been pinpointed with specialized equipment.
“We will do everything that is humanly possible to rescue the five trapped workers,” Maximo Pacheco, the president of Chile’s state-owned mining company Codelco, told a press conference Friday afternoon.
