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View Full Version : Six steps to survival for Chile miners



MNeagle
24th August 2010, 05:52 AM
The first supplies have reached the 33 miners trapped 2,300ft (700m) underground in a collapsed mine in Chile. With an estimated four months before they are rescued, what are the key challenges they face?

After the elation of learning they are alive comes the agony of waiting.

Nineteen days after the San Jose mine collapsed, the news that all 33 men trapped inside are still alive was greeted with celebrations more than 2,000ft above them.

But their loved ones will probably have to wait until Christmas to see them again, because it will take that long to bore a new hole wide enough to pull them through.

Glucose, rehydration tablets, oxygen and medicine have made their way down from the surface through an 8cm lifeline and into the miners' refuge, which is thought to be about 50 square metres, although some reports say it could be larger.

Trapped miners elsewhere in the world have had to wait to be rescued but very rarely, if ever, for this long. So what are some of the key challenges facing the men in the long months ahead?

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/48849000/jpg/_48849459_gomez_reu144.jpg
One of the trapped miners, Mario Gomez, 63, wrote a letter to his wife

more (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11071151)