On August 3, around 1:35 p.m., there was a landslide in a coal mine in the town of Agujita, in the municipality of Sabinas, Coahuila, Mexico, which led to the sinkhole being flooded, leaving ten trapped miners.
The accident occurred when the miners, who entered the mine through a vertical shaft, were working on the development of their excavation activities, at a depth of about 85 meters, and perforated the wall of a body of water, which when it collapsed, the left trapped.
The authorities reported that the collapse of the mine was due to the flooding of three reported wells, which led to the softening of the walls inside. The spokesman for the Red Cross in the area, Nicolás Fuentes, told CNN that so far the status of the disappeared in the mine is unknown.
Until midnight of the same day, the National Civil Protection Coordination (CNPC) indicated that 269 elements, belonging to federal and local authorities, were working at the site to carry out the rescue work of the workers. In addition, the arrival of a group of divers was expected to join the search tasks.
The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, reported through social networks that different agencies are already taking action in conjunction with authorities in the region to rescue trapped people. In addition, the president announced that the Ministry of National Defense activated the DN-III plan to proceed with relief work in the area of ​​the incident:
De último momento, me informa el subsecretario de la Defensa Nacional, general AgustÃn Radilla, que ya se aplica el plan DN-III y están en el lugar 92 elementos de la SecretarÃa de la Defensa Nacional con especialistas y cuatro binomios caninos.
— Andrés Manuel (@lopezobrador_) August 3, 2022
This August 4, during the morning presidential conference, the national coordinator of Civil Protection, Laura Velázquez, reported that five miners managed to escape and were transferred to a hospital of the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) after presenting injuries. Three remain hospitalized.
In addition, the official gave details of the operation launched at the scene:
It is important to highlight that to get to the mines you have to go down three shafts, it is complicated, but we have achieved it. We are strategically placing pumps in each of these wells in order to extract as much water as possible, have immediate access to the mines and rescue the miners as soon as possible.
The undersecretary of the National Defense Secretariat, AgustÃn Rádiala Suástegui, explained that the miners are trapped between two coal pits, 60 meters deep, which are flooded with 34 meters of water.
At the end of his morning conference, President López Obrador asked different organizations to report if they have large water extraction pumps to send them to Coahuila and support the rescue actions in the mine.
In addition, the president said that the priority is to rescue the miners and that later the exploitation permits and inspections will be investigated to determine the responsibilities.
Finally, López Obrador took the opportunity to send a message to the relatives of the miners:
I wish with all my soul that we rescue the miners. We must not lose faith, we must not lose hope. They are not alone.
The Ministry of Labor reported that the coal mine began operations in January of this year and, to date, there are no complaints of anomalies in its operation. Jaime Montelongo, a mine worker whose father of the same name is trapped, told local media that “the first minutes of the rescue were vital and nobody did anything”:
Help was key at that time. The rescue was short, they asked for the blown-up bombs, they made no move, they are already being left for dead.
In February 2006, an explosion at the Pasta de Conchos mine, in Nueva Rosita, Coahuila, caused the death of 65 miners, of which 63 bodies were never recovered, thus far being the worst mining accident in recent history. Mexico.
In 2020, the current federal government promised to rescue the bodies of the buried miners, a job with a large budget and technical complexity. However, work has not started.
Source: Okchicas
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